


The Warsaw Pact

by kieranwalker



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Lighthouse Keeper AU, M/M, kieren is bi in this unlike the show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 03:57:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 36,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12786453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kieranwalker/pseuds/kieranwalker
Summary: The town of Warsaw lies in the most remote part of northern Scotland at the coldest and farthest point from the familiar world possible. It boasts of a population in the hundreds supported by little: a grocery, a bar, a smattering of houses. Teetering on the edge of this town, held above the rocky cliffs, is a lighthouse which is home to its keeper, Kieren Walker, a solitary man few of the locals know. They whisper about him among themselves, saying that he hates company, that he's an outlaw, that he's just plain weird. Despite this chatter, every night the beacon hums to life and casts an orange glow across the choppy waters of the bay. Every day the man can be seen working inside it to keep it running. And every dawn he can be found slumped over a pint at the bar, fending off memories of a past that haunts him.





	The Warsaw Pact

The Warsaw Pact, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw among the Soviet Union and seven Soviet satellite states of Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War. (Wikipedia)

 

“More often than not, it is people, not ghosts, who haunt lighthouses.” Aaron Mahnke, LORE Ep. 23 “Rope and Railing”

***

The wind was whipping cold and fast today and Kieren knew he was going to be in for hell the minute he stepped foot outside. Today’s wind had strength to it, making the bones of his cabin creak and bend under the strain so that even before he left his bed, he knew he was in for a hell of a day. Days like this he was envious, despite himself, for a warm job in town and inside. The lighthouse would never let him off that easy, though.

 

 The cold was bracing as he swung his feet out of bed and felt the icy shocks of the frozen floor radiate up his soles, pushing through the holes in his socks. Northern Scotland was no fun in January and never worse than when coupled with holes that wormed their way into clothes every week. Some mornings the frost would take over the side of the cabin and freeze over the window. Instead of the usual landscape that greeted Kieren’s morning face, ice crystals had covered over the glass pane to cover the dead trees and grassless hills from view. This made him wary that frostbite might have been sliding into bed next to him the past few nights. He was only thirty-five and could already feel his joints freezing up and becoming more reluctant. Then again, premature aging came with the town.

 

 Like every morning, he shuffled into his clothes, bundling up in the usual stiff socks and layered shirts. There was no sense of fashion when he had to be out in sub-zero temperatures for as long as he did. He tugged on a woolen hat, pulling it down over his ears which the cold, over years and years of nibbling, had taken sizeable chunks out of. They looked like a rat’s, all gnawed up and chewed over, an ugly punishment the cold had given to him from being outside in it too long. Not that Kieren was a cosmetic person, but he now he found he avoided the mirror. He had been here for so long that they were grim reminders his body reflected his years as lighthouse keeper and that when he left, if ever, he would have a mark of this place forever. Ten years down the road, if he made it out, people would glance quickly at his ears and grimace. His body wasn’t worthy of a second’s glance, he knew.

 

A faint jingle came from the kitchen as he was grabbing his jacket from the coatrack. He smiled despite his need to get the day started, tugging on his jacket while making his way into the next room.

 

“Heya, girl,” he said in a soft voice, trying not to disturb Layla where she lay mostly asleep and curled up near the stove. Her bed, propped against the oven, had sucked up the last bits of heat from yesterday’s dinner, keeping her warm for a couple more hours into the night. Kieren worried about her out here all alone. The cabin wasn’t big but she was an old dog and they hadn’t been together six months yet.

 

Right now he stooped to see how warm she was as she blinked sleepy eyes at him, licking his hand before he laid it on her side. Lukewarm--not as good as he’d like. If only she weren’t scared of sleeping in his bed; the kitchen was dangerously cold these days. Still, she was happy enough to see him and he chuckled at her excitement as he draped a blanket over her.

 

“Sleep some more, girl. I’m going out anyway.”

 

She seemed disappointed and laid her head back down, relaxing back into her dreams. He chuckled again and pushed himself up, hands on thighs, ignoring the protestations of his bones, and headed for the door.

 

Outside the wind was as fierce as he’d thought, whipping across his face and stinging his eyes until all he wanted was to run back inside and slam the door to keep it out. But there was work to be done.

 

Scrunching down further into his scarf he took off for the lighthouse that lay at the end of the lane, standing up against the crumbling rocks and roiling sea below. It had originally been white and stood stark and fresh against the landscape, a beacon to the lost and wandering that offered safety. Despite all of Kieren’s maintenance efforts, it had faded over time to a dirty color, streaked with stains and perched precariously over the rocks. It leaned over the tumbling cliff more than was probably safe. The years had taken away its confident stance and left it hunched like a weeping willow as it struggled to hold itself up above the swift current crashing against the rocks underneath.

 

Luckily, the road was short. It was more of a disused gravel path that hadn’t been maintained in some time, and that Kieren knew, come springtime, would probably fall to him to fix up. He suspected no one used it except him and Layla.

 

No one ever came to the lighthouse, which suited Kieren just fine. Nothing tried to disturb the steady rhythm he had set up in his life as he tended to the lighthouse day after day and received his government check every half-month in the mail. It was all enough to keep him happy and his mind focused every day on something external.

 

He liked to look up at the lighthouse, every now and then, and remember that he had kept it so beautiful, that his sweat and his calloused hands had gone into keeping it alive. Despite the roughened panes, the chipped shingles on top, and the paint peeling off the sides, the lighthouse was still majestic in size and possessed a residual vibe of authority that the years didn’t manage to wear down. It was always beautiful to Kieren.

 

Sometimes in summer when the lighthouse stood beautiful in warm twilight, he imagined what it would look like without him. Fallen into disrepair, the windows smashed, the boats in the boathouse reduced to splinters by the elements, nature could finally take back the place it had been trying so hard to reclaim. It was as if he had kept a little town alive, one with only him and the boats and the lighthouse steps as its residents.

 

When he reached the lighthouse, he made for the door immediately, barely pausing to cast a glance over the rocks and the shallows that looked chaotic and unfriendly in the cold morning sunlight. The water sloshed among them as usual without disturbing the organisms that clung to their sides. Everything looked--despite the high winds--unperturbed.

 

No major problems outside meant he was good to go inside and tend to the beacon. In the summer, he usually paused to tend to the rocks, stooping by the tidal pools to observe their culture, the little creatures eeking out a living in the cracks or in the sand.

 

It was sentimental, he knew, because the area could do just fine without him scooping out the invasive algae or hiding unprotected eggs. Certainly the whole rest of the ocean did. But he couldn’t help loving the feeling of having done something to help the sea itself, with its small habitat here, and not just the town. Sometimes in summer the snails would crawl up his arms and make him feel at home on the shore. Running and splashing along the edge of the water was Layla’s favorite activity, giving the chance to stretch her legs from winter. The warm sun would sit overhead while he knelt in the sand and ran his hands through the kelp in the water, sometimes for hours.

 

Today was too cold for that, however, and he passed by the shoreline without stopping as he headed inside. It would have to survive without him for a couple more months until winter gave way to spring.

 

Once inside, he headed up the stairs to the beacon after grabbing his box of supplies in the closet in the entryway. It was tight inside the lighthouse with barely enough room to turn around before you hit one of the walls. The stairs spiraled up the center in a tight formation that ran all the way to the top. Quickly, nimbly, without pausing to test the integrity of the steps, Kieren ran up to the landing, confident as he was every day that they would hold him until he made it up to the beacon.

 

For the next few hours he tended to the beacon and the lighthouse as a whole, cleaning, repairing and making sure everything was in good shape. Every day he checked on the beacon’s functionality and on Thursdays wiped down the interior of the room. The few other rooms including the keeper’s designated living quarters had all fallen to neglect from disuse and a lack of time on Kieren’s part. When he moved to town, he had been offered the option of living inside the lighthouse and he had taken it. One winter of isolation, monotony, and freezing cold had taught him it was well worth the extra expense to move a few steps away.

 

He went about his work meticulously and quietly, listening to the sound of the wind as it ran through the tower. Sometimes, if it was strong enough, it rattled the frames of the windows, scaring him into thinking the lighthouse would get blown into pieces. It didn’t get him anymore, though. He knew what the place could and couldn’t stand.

 

Once he had cared for the beacon, he would move outside to care for the exterior. In the summer, this meant powerwashing with the hose, but that was frozen out back these days. Today Kieren just made a quick scan of the area around the lighthouse and boathouse for large weeds or pests and, finding nothing, moved on.

 

A quick glance to the seashore before he unlocked the boathouse ascertained that there weren’t any large branches felled by the wind that could obstruct the beaver habitats that he knew sat a little ways upstream. The rocks didn’t appear to catch any fish washed up in the high tide, either. Nothing impaled upon the rocky coast meant Kieren could move onto checking the boats and mending any damages.

 

All in all, the general upkeep had kept Kieren busy for two or three hours. There was just enough time left over before lunch to get some work done on his ongoing project: clearing the rocks out of the cavern mouth across the bay. The last storm had been so violent that it had pushed a bunch of rocks right up against the entrance to the cave, leaving it blocked off and pasted up with detritus from the sea. It had been effectively sealed shut. Kieren was worried about any birds or other animals that might be trapped inside, so the job couldn’t wait for the warmth of spring.

 

Across the bay sat a small inlet that the sea, diverting from its usual path, filled up with water. There was a cave at the inmost point of the little cove which was usually open and full of breaking waves, but today was bricked up as if closed to the public. Kieren caught a glimpse of it from his dinghy across water and grimly noted how little he had accomplished from a week’s worth of labor already. Anchoring near the cave he gritted his teeth, resigned himself to the work, and waded aground. Water leaked into his boots and weighed him down and he knew that today was going to be a tough slog. His back would ache like hell come evening, but he didn’t begrudge the labor. Sitting around in his cabin idle all day would be worse.

 

Around noon he broke for lunch, heading back to the cabin to feed Layla and grab something for himself. Layla’s sharp barks greeted him as he came up the path. They were muffled but distinct and Kieren could hear them from all the way down the path. Without fail she would be in the window, hands on the sill, anxiously looking down the path for her first glimpse of Kieren.

He was glad to see her and they both settled down to a hot meal gratefully.

 

After lunch he spent the rest of the day on the cave. It was slow work relocating the huge rocks and felt longer for the cold. By the end of the day, he was in desperate need of some warmth and hot food better than his sludge-like stew.

 

At five-thirty the sky grew dark and he knew he couldn’t work any longer. A quick boat ride back to his side of the shore and he set off for the nearest pub immediately, not even stopping back at the cabin. He desperately wanted to get warm, really warm, and didn’t want to delay the cold trek he knew he had make. Kieren’s car had long since broken down so it was a cold twenty minute walk in the dark to town.

 

“Town” was a generous description for Warsaw which boasted of fewer than five hundred residents and only one of every necessary shop. One supermarket, one post office, and, of course, one bar kept all five hundred happy. Hell, Kieren was just happy they had a bar here in the middle of nowhere despite the fact that the townspeople weren’t brimming with friendliness.

 

A cracked and worn down road connected all these fixtures together and came together to form something of a town square, though by no means was it bustling at this hour of the night. More than anything, the lights cast gloomy shadows onto the asphalt, desolate of any person to lift the landscape out of its misery.

 

The bar sat at one corner of the square with its lights winking on and off in disrepair. Several neon signs advertised its amenities and a good amount of cars were parked outside in a haphazard manner; there weren’t any real parking spaces for them to use. Everything in the town was left to disarray.

 

When he entered the bar, sure enough, he was met with the usual stares and hunched shoulders as if he was intruding on a conversation they had all been having before he walked in. He slipped into a seat at the corner of the bar, flagging down Rita for a pint. Casting a glance around caused him to scare away many prying eyes that darted away from his quickly. He didn’t pay it any mind; this was typical behavior for the barflys of Warsaw, weird as it may be. They were all curious about each other but unwilling to have a conversation. So he always looked and they always looked down and away.

 

Ignoring the crawling feeling of eyes on his back, he trained his attention to the TV screen above the bar where the news announcer was presenting some news bit.

 

“Come to get in touch with the real world?” A voice came light and happy from beside him as a man slid into the seat next to him. At Kieren’s blank stare, he added, “I haven’t seen you around here before.”

 

_Likewise_ , Kieren thought to himself but just said, “Uh,” unsure how to respond. He wasn’t really in the mood to entertain strangers, just here trying to get the deep freeze out of his bones as quick as he could so he could bring some warmth home to Layla.

 

The guy didn’t move along, though. Kieren glared at him and took a couple swigs of his beer, annoyed that this guy chose to be friendly with him tonight.

 

The combination of abysmal weather and remote location meant that Warsaw was a hard-edged, cold-shoulder town and Kieren liked it that way. As part of an unspoken agreement, no neighbors baked cookies for each other and no one borrowed cups of sugar when you could keep it for yourself and be sure that your neighbor would be exchanged for someone new by next spring.

 

Most of the new people were wimps, one-seasoners who came up to forget the trouble they caused at the end of the summer, whether it had been messing up with a lover or screwing up in the eyes of the law. The locals, the regulars who had roots so deep into the town they couldn’t be extracted without rocking the foundation, were constantly bored of it, and when Kieren had come up he had been subject to the same enthusiastic ignorance for the first year. Nothing ever changed in Warsaw and no one cared about the rotating cast of special guests.

 

For having stayed on years after that first one, Kieren had gleaned a grudging respect from the other pub regulars over time.

 

Kieren looked around at the familiar, weather-beaten faces. He thought it was probably a little grim; everyone came here to escape something and these sorry sons of bitches, him included, but couldn’t ever get over it. None of them could shake what it was that burrowed deep into their bones one autumn so bad it drove them so far out of civilization. God knew they shouldn’t be proud of it, and yet, the bar regulars held a sort of tacit approval of one another.

 

There’s a kind of strength to it, Kieren had to admit as he watched a former trucker and a former doctor shoot pool in the back of the bar. They all looked into each other's eyes over their pints from time to time, despite their external coldness, and tried to find something in the other barflys they lacked themselves. After a moment, they would just clench their jaws and look away, disappointed and scared of each other’s expressions.

 

Kieren didn’t see any of that on this new guy, green up to his knees. Odds were that he’d freeze to death in the next few months, though. His thin sweater hung off him loose like a blanket and the coat hanging on the coat rack by the door was moth-bitten, almost in tatters. He spared a few moments feeling sorry for him but then remembered the guy who came before him and the woman before that, and figured there was no use in wasting emotion on another temporary.

 

He hunched back over his pint, gritting his teeth against his thoughts.

 

The guy shot him a strange look and another twinge of annoyance struck Kieren. Apparently he wasn’t going to give up--well, that meant tonight was ruined. He called it a night.

 

Giving clear signals he was leaving--draining his pint and throwing some bills on the bar--were lost on the guy who chose to speak again.

 

“I’m Simon,” he said, looking at Kieren expectantly as if he hadn’t just stood up to leave.

 

“Well, Simon, I’m leaving. Have a nice life, and keep it out of mine.” Kieren wound his scarf around his neck, making for the door.

 

“Wait, what? What have I done to you? Am I really that annoying?” He had on a goofy smile like he didn’t believe it.

 

Kieren crossed back and leaned in so the curious bartender didn’t hear what he said. “In case you haven’t noticed, Simon, no one is friends around here. And if you’re looking for a fuck to cure your broken heart you’re going to have to keep looking. I really can’t help you, goodbye.”

 

Simon narrowed his eyes, considering. “Alright,” he said finally, backing down. “If you want to wallow in your own misery.”

 

Kieren scoffed, jammed his hat over his head, and took off out the door, back into the swirling cold air and his equally freezing cabin. Everything would be better come April.

 

***

 

Clearing the cave was just as impossible the next morning. The rocks were wedged in deep and tight, fitted into each other’s grooves like the mess of dead leaves and mud was glue. By four p.m. when the sun started going down, he had just about shoved off the top most layer, allowing him a peephole into the cave. He peered in with his flashlight, checking for any animals still alive. There were a couple birds who needed encouragement to fly towards the light and behind them, strewn around the rocks and edge of the water, were several little animal corpses.

 

Despite himself, tears sprung to Kieren’s eyes. He stared into the cave horrified at himself and the fact that he hadn’t been able to work fast enough for these creatures. If only he had worked overtime, if only he hadn’t spent so much daylight on the lighthouse, he knew he could have saved them. His heart laid heavy in his chest. He usually never paused for sentimentality--it was largely useless out here in the brutal elements where someone new was claimed every day. But the animals looked so helpless, lying there decomposing, returning to the earth and water that they used to thrive off of. Kieren wondered if they had wandered into the cave in search of a retreat from the outside world and its stresses, of preying and getting preyed upon. If so, they had ultimately exchanged entrapment in a lifestyle for imprisonment until their deaths.

 

Maybe there was no escape from habit, Kieren thought despite himself, wiping his face before the tears could freeze on his cheeks. Simon’s voice came back to him unbidden, jeering about his wallowing and he shrugged it off as best he could. He jumped back into the dinghy and motored back to his side of the shore to spend the last few hours in the day up in the beacon room, tinkering with the light. He wasn’t any good at making things work again, but it occupied his hands and mind until the sun had long since set.

 

Back in the cabin and heating up dinner, smiling and playing with Layla who was jumping around excited to see him, the concerns of the day faded away. Kieren knew why he was here. He knew that he would never fall prey to the suction of this place, no matter what Simon thought, he wasn’t like those other poor guys at the pub. He wasn’t truly one of them; he was wholly independent of this place, an immediately detachable limb.

 

Portions for dinner were small, but he enjoyed his limp beans and stale rice, trying not to remember what he once ate when he lived a short car ride away from a grocery store. He thought of fresh vegetables fondly as if they were a long lost myth.

 

The wind had died down tonight and his cabin lay quiet between the large oaks he could see waving outside his windows in the moonlight. Layla had gone to sleep by now, curling by his feet instead of the oven, whimpering a little in her dream. The shadows seemed elongated in the corners of the room and the place seemed emptier than usual, the wood on the walls standing blank instead of animated with the its history. He was still spooning beans into his mouth when he thought of going to the pub again.

 

Before he could contemplate the likelihood he would get harassed again, he gulped down the rest of his beans and threw on his coat, stomping down the road toward the town lights before he could stop himself.

 

When he got inside, he scanned the patrons who stared back at him in a hostile tableau. When he spotted Simon in the back shooting pool against himself, relief poured through him. A jolt of realization told him he hadn’t come tonight for the drinks.

 

Whether or not he was going to get a warm welcome was unclear, but he made his way over to join Simon, swiping a bottle of liquor on the way. It was sweating from the heat in the bar, but Kieren didn’t mind the thermostat turned up all the way as it allowed him to take his coat off for once. During the winter, he practically lived in it, spending all day wearing it outside and sleeping in it at night. It was only January and Kieren was already sick of it and couldn’t wait to bury it in the closet when the frost broke.

 

Ignoring the bartender’s gibes about visiting two nights in a row, uncharacteristic for him, he slouched over to the pool table. It was dimly lit; of the two lights that hung overhead, only one was still on and flickering. The other seemed to have been taken over by the ice outside, almost an icicle dangling over the green felt tabletop, which struck Kieren as strange due to the temperature in the bar. He frowned at it as he leaned against the end of the bar nearest the table, where no one sat.

 

Simon glanced up at him as he approached and chuckled before taking his shot, sending balls scattering. Straightening up, he appraised Kieren from across the table. “I’ve been asking around about you, Kieren Walker.” So he had learned Kieren’s name. “No one has much to say.”

 

Kieren shrugged and poured himself a drink. The bottle was dusty but the booze came out just fine. Without pause, he knocked one back. He wasn’t dumb enough to spill about his past to everyone in the bar the second he had one too many. It was another one-seasoner habit he refused to pick up. The others loved to get smashed and talk about their troubles with one another, as if they couldn’t bear to do it looking into each other’s sober eyes in daylight. Simon didn’t seem the type to tell strangers everything about himself either, but maybe Kieren was wrong. Maybe he was made of stronger stuff than he looked and next spring would see him still hunched over the bar on weekends. When the memory of the cold crept back in with next fall, however, he would be gone for sure.

 

Reflecting on how many people he had seen come and go made Kieren feel older than he was, his age suddenly pressing down on him in the form of years spent here.

 

“I don’t kiss and tell,” he merely said in reply to Simon’s question. “How was it last night, sleeping in your sweater?” Kieren gestured to the sweater he had on, the same hole-y one as yesterday. If he admitted it, he was mocking Simon for his inexperience with the cold.

 

“Would’ve been warmer with you,” Simon replied smoothly, dropping Kieren a wink, deliberately ignoring the malice in Kieren’s voice.

 

Kieren just snorted. “What brings you to Warsaw?” As if it was just a town people could drop into, with business to attend to or relatives to visit. It’s population consisted of loners and any businesses that had cropped up to support them and contain their tragedy from the outside world.

 

Simon gave him a look that said he knew this and a thin smile that said he found it amusing. Kieren resented being judged by him, so he pressed his question.

 

“Fine, do you want me to guess?” He answered his own question with a slow, pointed glance at the TV, letting his gaze linger. Simon predictably paled and Kieren smirked. He had seen everything that had come through here before, nothing surprised him.

 

Simon ducked his head to take a shot on the pool table and when he straightened back up he was glaring at Kieren. “What do you want?” He practically growled.

 

Kieren shrugged. “Nothing. No one here wants anything.” Every inhabitant of Warsaw was paused at a crossroads in their life, all just ghosts stumbling from bar to home and back, living in the past.

 

What Simon had said to him yesterday still nagged at the back of Kieren’s mind. He knew being bothered by it was ridiculous, it only gave Simon what he wanted, but he couldn’t help it.

 

He took a drink and said, “You said yesterday that I was wallowing. I’m not wallowing.”

 

Simon barked out a laugh at that, glare forgotten. “‘I’m not wallowing,’ he imitated Kieren’s blank tone. “Boy, do you have me convinced. You must be the least self-aware man I’ve ever met, you know that?”

 

“I’m not.” Kieren tried not to sound petulant.

 

“Hm,” Simon rested his hands atop his pool cue and put his head on top of them, surveying Kieren where he leaned against the bar. “You’re so caught up in your own cloud of self-pity that I bet you can’t even see past your own nose, Kieren.” He gave a sharp laugh. “Of course you spent all day thinking about what I said. Proves my point.”

 

Kieren resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Simon had it all wrong; Kieren might not be the cheeriest bloke here but he sure wasn't equivalent with the other drunkards with their long faces like dogs in the pound. He’d never become one of them.

 

Simon, to Kieren’s irritation, laughed.

 

“Oh, you’re worse than them, pretending.” Pretending? If anything, Kieren was better than the rest of them, more self-aware, more in control. He had reality and Warsaw reconciled long ago, two separate worlds he had forced to collide. Simon seemed to want to get punched.

 

He stomped down the urge to yell back that he wasn’t and instead spat out, “You don’t know me.” It put an edge on their conversation, venomous and sharp, that made it definitively less than friendly.

 

Simon just raised his eyebrows at Kieren and moved around the pool table, towards Kieren’s side. “I don’t have to. It’s the same person in here multiplied a dozen times, except your delusions are one more notch more crazy than the rest of them. It’s a wonder this town is functional at all.”

 

At this point, Kieren wanted to take Simon out back and knock some sense into him so he would shut up once and for all. The next time he came stumbling around to check the TVs for his name he’d do it with his tail between his legs.

 

Now he took another step closer to Simon and threatened, low and fast, “The only thing not working around here is you. Do I need to take care of you?” His own patriotism surprised him. Far from the most active citizen in the Warsaw community, Kieren kept exclusively to himself, maintaining that he hated this place. It only took one outsider to put him on his defense, though.

 

In terms of defense, Kieren knew he wasn’t the most muscular guy. Back in his old life he had been completely soft, all mushy flesh and bones that Warsaw hardened over, giving him the rough, rugged look he sported today. Hanging out in a bar all the time had taught him some moves as well. Despite his small size than Simon, he wasn’t hopeless at looking tough.

 

Simon didn’t look cowed, however. To Kieren’s surprise, Simon’s pupils dilated and his breath came quicker at their closeness. His eyebrows crooked up in a way that responded, “ _Do_ you?”

 

Kieren was suddenly, uncomfortably aware of how close his body was to Simon’s pressed back against the pool table. Simon’s still had a hand on his pool cue, the perfect picture of casual behavior besides his gaze fixed on Kieren’s lips. Kieren felt sickly satisfied that, for all Simon taunted him, he could drive him crazy like this.

 

The words were just behind his lips: I’m in control. He said them to Simon, almost pressing the words against his lips. “I’m in control.” It was a statement of victory even though Kieren knew he was the one who would be waking up tomorrow in a cold sweat at the memory of his past life.

 

The moment broke when Kieren, leaning forward closer to Simon, reached behind him instead. He turned his head so their lips missed each other, Simon getting a mouthful of cheek instead. Kieren wrapped his hand around Simon’s drink where it rested on the green felt of the table. He lifted it to his lips and drained it easily before pushing away from Simon and his dark eyes and retreating to his spot at the bar. He laid down some money, cast a last look at Simon, and headed out of the bar and into the night. The whole way back to the lighthouse he tried not to tremble but kept heading down the road, further and further into darkness.

 

Simon was unnerving in a way that wasn’t interesting so much as it made Kieren scared for himself. If Simon had gotten under his skin in only two days, how long would it be until he knew everything about Kieren? His secrets were things he kept locked behind his lips during the day, only ever manifesting as words when whispered to Layla late at night.

 

Kieren, determined to forget about the encounter, turned his mind back to his list of chores for tomorrow.

 

***

 

The next morning Layla was antsy and roused Kieren out of bed earlier than he wanted. Laziness tried to tug him back into bed and away from the cold outdoors, but he forced himself up. He had breakfast with Layla, bundled up, and let both of them outside to face the day. Today he wasn’t going to work on the cave but instead hike into town for groceries, a brief respite from the hard work.

 

Layla bounded ahead as they strolled up the road into town, both enjoying the escape from routine. He recalled the list of what he needed in his head. Soup, booze, fruit, vegetables, if they had any. It was just the usual, but Kieren looked forward to enjoying a full meal tonight, even if it was sure to be a couple days old on the shelf. He counted on his stove to burn away any rotten flavor.

 

After several minutes, they entered town which was still and quiet this morning. The manager glared at him as he walked into the store with Layla bounding around unleashed, but Kieren just glared back. He wasn’t going to leave her outside in the cold. Layla was disliked here, but he knew they wouldn’t stop Kieren from bringing her in; they needed his business too badly. So every week he got a hostile welcome which, as a result, kept his grocery trips to a minimum.

 

They had mostly potatoes today and he was dispirited to think of the monotony of his future dinners. After all these years, he had no idea why he was still going to the same shithole for subpar produce. In winter, though, food mostly tasted like hot and that was good enough for him. With the inch of ice that had coated everything since October, Kieren was just desperately trying to keep his body temperature livable.

 

After selecting his potatoes and paying, Kieren and Layla hurried the walk back. When they arrived, Kieren dropped the groceries inside before he trekked down to the boathouse to repair one of the dinghies that had already taken a beating this winter. It’s boards were bent and cracked, the harsh damage from hitting the rocky coastline too many times evident in its broken frame. Kieren almost had to completely rebuild it, pulling apart the existing spine, sawing new boards, fitting them into the boat’s frame, and setting them. Not an easy task to do alone. When he finally got to sanding off the barnacles and painting, he’d be glad.

 

Nothing was ever easy around here, but Kieren welcomed the distraction. He let his task absorb the rest of his morning and afternoon, idly aware of Layla darting around, investigating the tide pools that had popped up at low tide. Kieren relaxed into the comfortable feeling of being grounded in something real and tangible--Layla, his life here--and something so simple--marking the board, cutting it, fitting it to the frame. He sank into a peaceful rhythm and didn’t look up for hours. Not until Layla started barking her head off.

 

Kieren knew all her barks; this one was menacing, invoking her full German Shepherd guard-dog genetics to threaten someone scary enough to be trouble. Concerned, he set down his saw and came out of the boathouse looking around for her. If she had poked her nose into a sea urchin again, she would be in a lot of pain and he had to get her to hospital quickly.

 

It was mostly likely some sort of small wildlife like that, but sometimes a bear or mountain lion wandered out of the trees that edged what Kieren thought of as his property. Just to be safe, he grabbed his shotgun as he headed over from where it leaned against the side of the lighthouse. Two rounds were preloaded. Kieren had figured if he would ever need the gun, he’d need it quick.

 

Rounding the corner of his cabin and approaching the road, he saw a tall dark figure looming over Layla. She was barking and jumping, growling at the creature’s waving arms and biting his clothes. Kieren realized she was trying to drag him away from the lighthouse and Kieren in a sacrificial show of loyalty. All he could think of was--bear.

 

He raised his rifle, aimed, and fired at it.

 

He missed. It didn’t matter, though; the bear was spooked, stumbling away from Layla and half up the road. It stopped before it reached the trees, however, then started waving its arms and yelling. He felt the self-satisfied grin slide off his face--it wasn’t a bear.

 

Cursing in his head, he jogged over to where Layla was still barking like crazy and the person was shouting. Halfway there, he realized who it was and stopped in his tracks. Of course it was the worst person Kieren could have possibly shot at and probably his only human visitor in years.

 

“‘Lo, Simon,” he mumbled when he got close. “Sorry ‘bout that…”

 

It didn’t make Simon look any less livid.

 

“Jesus Christ!” His shouts were lost under Layla’s barks. “Fucking hell, you motherfucker! This is why you shouldn’t be alone! I just got shot at, what the hell!”

 

Kieren suppressed the strange urge to laugh at Simon’s distress. Simon ranted for a while longer as Kieren crouched next to Layla who was upset. She didn’t like his gun either.

 

As Simon seemed to wind down, Kieren headed him off by saying, “Shake it off, you sissy.”

 

Simon’s face contorted with rage a couple more times and then relaxed, giving up.

 

“Your dog doesn’t like me,” he spat through gritted teeth.

 

Kieren grinned down at her. “She doesn’t take to newcomers.”

 

“Must be hard for you to meet people.” Simon struck close to home and he knew it, looking at Kieren hard. Kieren glared back at him. Most of the people he brought around to the cabin were one-night stands, but they counted.

 

He chose not to respond to Simon’s gibe. “What’re you doing here, then?” His tone isn’t kind. Whatever happened last night at the bar, a one-off attraction, some kind of stunt he was pulling on Kieren, he wasn’t this guy’s friend.

 

“I forgot.”

 

“You forgot,” Kieren repeats in annoyance. It’s the laziest lie in the book--this guy must be really desperate to see him. He turned and walked back to his half-repaired boat, done with this conversation. “Look, man, I’m going to head you off right here. Isn’t this all going a little far to get a one-night stand?”

 

“Maybe,” Simon replied. He was leaning against the side of the lighthouse next to Kieren’s sawhorse with chunks of discarded wood strewn all around it in the grass. “But it’s a small town, and I’m not used to it yet.”

 

Kieren picked up his saw and started cutting some boards so he wouldn’t have to look at Simon. “Well, I’m hardly going to be all buddy-buddy with you. Find someone else to cuddle by the fire with.”

 

“Nah, ‘cause the second guy on my list is Old Rick from the bar and he looks like his athlete’s foot spread somehow to his whole body. You can see why I’m reluctant.”

 

Kieren wasn’t oblivious. He knew, in some roundabout way, that Simon was flirting with him and that it wasn’t a good idea to get involved with someone. So he didn’t know why, despite himself, he gave a short laugh at Simon’s joke.

 

He regretted it instantly. Without looking up, he could feel Simon slowly fixing him with a stare, the kind that x-rayed him and left him with a slow burn in his stomach and a growing fear of being known. Kieren was already afraid Simon knew more about him than was comfortable.

 

He looked up and met Simon’s, who held it gaze like he could seduce him with his eyes. Kieren felt his insides heat up and it was as if electricity was shooting under his skin--and that scared him. For years now, he had always been in control. Simon couldn’t make him feel anything he didn’t want to; he knew how to protect himself. Then why did he return his gaze, masked though it was underneath his face’s hard lines and closed expression that he defaulted to?

 

“Stop it.” Kieren’s voice sounded loud in the the silence of the afternoon.

 

“No.”

 

Kieren’s stomach lurched in pleasure, betraying himself. Setting his jaw, he turned back to his sawhorse, dragging the saw harder through the grain of the wood, making his muscles ache.

 

He wasn’t surprised when Simon didn’t leave because he was ignored. The guy had a way of clinging on like a barnacle, against all odds. Almost steady in the face of danger, but resigned to it.

 

He didn’t know when to leave well enough alone.

 

Wrapped up in his work, Kieren didn’t notice when Simon approached him, silently, carefully, like Kieren was a skittish animal.

 

Gently, Simon reached out and brushed Kieren’s arm, lifting off a barnacle that had clung to his arm after being scraped off the boat. The gesture was soft and meaningful, like something couples did for each other. Removing something gnarled and alien that didn’t belong and tossing it out to sea, never to bother them again. Simon smiled at Kieren, tender, which made him feel sick to his stomach about what he was going to do next.

 

Curling his lip into a sneer, Kieren knocked Simon’s hand away from his arm, barnacle falling to the grass. “No,” he hissed. Just one word, but he put enough venom into it that the smile slid straight from Simon’s face. Kieren felt dirty, terrible for a moment as he looked into the hurt in Simon’s eyes. Was this the person he was? Was it all he amounted to? Causing pain in those who tried to reach him again and again?

 

Part of him wished he could take it back, but now Simon would know they couldn’t be close. Now he would leave, wouldn’t bother Kieren in the pub anymore and would leave town as soon as the frost broke, life in a forgotten town not as quaint imagined. And everything would be all right. And Kieren could continue as he was.

 

He wasn’t going to commit the same mistake twice.

 

“Okay,” Simon said, clearly gulping down hurt. “Okay,” he repeated and took up an armful of lumber and lugged it over to the skeleton of the boat. Bending over it, to Kieren’s surprise, he started fitting the pieces in, assembling the boat, building it back up with the boards.

 

Kieren just blinked at him. “Excuse me, what?” He meant for his tone to be rude, but it came out hopeful.

 

Simon didn’t look up. Kieren couldn’t see his face.

 

“What are you still doing here?” Kieren was accusing now. Frustration rose up in him; he just wanted to be left alone. How hard was that?

 

Simon flicked his gaze upward, incredulous. Clear lines of pain receded from his expression--he was obviously trying to save face. When he spoke, his voice was cold, but it sounded forced. “I’m sorry, did you just want me to leave you alone to mope? Am I getting in the way of your precious isolation?”

 

That stung. Kieren retorted, “Oh, wow, Simon, I’m so sorry.” He said it in an overly grand way, like he was projecting onstage for an audience. The birds up in the dunes could probably hear him. “It must just be so hard for you. I’m so _sorry_ that I won’t fuck you!”

 

He punched the word “fuck” and saw it hit Simon like a blow to the chest. It made him feel like a monster, lashing out when cornered, relying on its own instincts of self-preservation.

 

The color rose hot and red in Simon’s face, churning Kieren’s stomach. Simon was getting mad and Kieren was already riled up himself. This should have felt good; this meant Simon would storm away from Kieren, leaving him to his own devices again.

 

Suddenly, Simon’s face changed. It smoothed over, all his anger wiped from his face as if it were a chalkboard. He had managed to calm himself down in one quick moment. Instead, the emerging expression was much softer...something Kieren couldn’t place.

 

Simon said, “I’m going to stay here for you, because I have a feeling no one else would. I feel like that’s probably why you’re out here alone with no one in your life.”

 

It’s fucking pity. Simon needed to shut the hell up, and fast. Kieren has heard enough of this drivel to last a lifetime. At least the rest of the people in town let him be and don’t come to harass him at his home.

 

Simon spoke again, “You shouldn’t be left all alone.”

 

The guy was seriously trying to run his life. As if Kieren was some baby that, left unsupervised, would chew its fingers off and starve to death.

 

Well, he wasn’t going to sit here and listen to a sermon from some out-of-towner who didn’t know shit about his life. Tossing down his saw, which had still been clutched in his hand with white knuckles, he took a few quick steps until he was right in front of Simon. He picked him up by his collar, dragged him close, and then, quietly, dangerously explained the situation for him.

 

“I am not some pet project for you, Simon. I am not a fixer-upper, my life is not your new to-do list. Quit trying to come around and cure me. I have that under perfect control. I moved here with perfectly clear goals, not that it’s any of your fucking business, and I’m not wallowing or isolated, I’m biding my time. I’m not ‘alone.’ And I don’t care if you were a big shot criminal in your life before Warsaw,” he said, remembering what he knew of Simon’s past. “Go find someone else to fuck.” He said the words with such force he hoped they drilled into Simon’s skull and got imprinted on his brain.

 

Something flared up in Simon’s eyes. “Fuck you, Kieren Walker. I’m not some entitled son of a bitch, I’m the only person who’s cared about you for ages!” His angry spittle sprayed in Kieren’s face as he spoke he was so close.

 

This was the moment, Kieren knew. A moment he had had over a hundred times during this conversation, to retreat, withdraw, surrender. To maybe salvage a relationship with Simon, like Simon wanted. To be kinder and see the chance to escape his cycle of hurting people while there was still someone willing to help him.

 

But Kieren had never known how to fight his own inertia.

 

He rolled his eyes, cruelly. “Oh, great, a complete lowlife cares about me. The absolute dregs of society deigns to make me a charity case, I’m blessed.”

 

Something was rising in Simon, so Kieren tightened his grip on Simon’s sweatshirt and kept going. “Am I supposed to be glad you’ve taken an interest in meddling in my life? You know nothing about me, except that you find me attractive. You would be a pathetic excuse for a fuck, worse than my—”

 

The color darkened in Simon’s face.

 

“Why do you want me to hate you?!” exploded out of him. “Why?” The veins popped on his face. No pause for an answer before he was raising his fist, pulling it back, and bringing it down to connect with Kieren’s jaw, throwing his whole body weight down so they toppled into the grass. Kieren’s fist was still around Simon’s collar.

 

They grappled, but Simon was on top and knocking pair of black eyes into Kieren before Kieren could regain himself. Kieren flipped them over, decking Simon across the face in return. Now a matching pair of splotches crawled across their cheeks.

 

Kieren jammed his knee into Simon’s groin, hoping to strike his solar plexus, but was blocked halfway by a knee coming out of nowhere to ram into him. Their legs tangled and arms swinging at each other, the fight would look ridiculous to anyone looking on.

 

Kieren welcomed the warm surge of adrenaline to his blood as he absorbed another punch from where Simon’s arm had snaked out from under him.

 

Then, pressing down, Kieren shifted his hips to the right, just a little, enough so his leg slipped down past Simon’s. It pressed hard into his crotch, causing Simon to let out a moan and arch his back up against Kieren.

 

Kieren was caught off guard. He hadn’t expected to get this reaction. He wanted to taunt Simon for his slip, call him a slut or whatever, but hearing the noises he made underneath Kieren, it wasn’t funny anymore.

 

He pressed down again, rubbing up against Simon and feeling a sick satisfaction when he moaned again.

 

“Fuck,” Kieren whispered, almost to himself. Simon looked up at him with dark eyes, half filled with anger and half by lust.

 

He glared at Kieren, waiting for him to say something. “You’re pathetic,” he spat out.

 

“Likewise, Simon Monroe,” Kieren replied and he kissed him. Simon’s gasp at the realization that Kieren knew his full name--and the danger that could mean for Simon--turned to a deep groan as he got pressed further into the grass.

 

He pulled back, rolling off him and ripping his mouth from Simon’s. Simon’s eyes asked a question Kieren ignored.

 

Kieren pushed himself to his feet and went into the lighthouse, leaving the door cracked. When Simon entered, closing the door after him, Kieren surged forward and pinned him against the wall. He licked into Simon’s mouth, surprised to hear his own moans mingling with those coming from Simon.

 

When they were done, Kieren felt the guilt creeping back into his periphery, but pushed those thoughts away. It didn’t mean anything until tomorrow.

 

“Save that one for a rainy day, Monroe,” he said, trying to sound light and breezy.

 

Tucking himself back into his pants, Simon turned to fix Kieren with a long look. He was still pitying him then, but having the grace not to say it.

 

“If you think you can replace any of the people I lost, Simon, then think again,” Kieren said in a low tone. “And I’m not the femme fatale in your James Bond life, either, so keep looking.”

 

Simon, hesitating, looked like he wanted to argue, but decided against it. He just nodded at Kieren, looking him over from tousled sex hair to loosely zipped jeans.

 

When Simon had left the lighthouse, Kieren was left with the uneasy sense of regret, like had wanted to say something but couldn’t figure it out before he was gone. But the truth was, the guy didn’t know anything about Kieren’s life and it should stay that way.

 

Bits and clues, that was all they had about each other. Two full names each and a handful of dropped comments to figure out each other’s character. Yet Simon seemed determined to worm his way into Kieren’s secrets, even if it meant showing his cards to everyone.

 

Aside from a few blushes here and there, Simon didn’t appear to sweating over the secrets he was keeping. He looked like he slept untroubled at night, like the drink didn’t put him to sleep and the chill in his bones didn’t wake him, and for that Kieren hated him. His own past must not keep him distracted enough--he wanted to play tourist in Kieren’s. That wasn’t going to happen. He’d had enough visitors over the years.

 

As Kieren watched him trudge up the path, tucking his shirt into his pants, he swore to himself what he swore when he first decided to leave London for the north those couple years ago: no attachments. He couldn’t be trusted to hold a relationship in his hand and not break it, sending icy shards of glass into the flesh of everyone he knew, so he was done.

 

Like a Catholic, he had to stay on his knees, bones aching and muscles screaming for relief, until his time was done and his sins paid for. An eye for an eye was only fair, but then he would be here in Warsaw his whole life, scraping out his meager living. At the very least, he could not leave until he was reborn again, absolution achieved, and ready to return.

 

***

 

Kieren woke the next morning subdued. Trying to ignore his mind flipping through the events of yesterday, he brushed off his covers and pushed himself out of bed. He engaged himself in caring for Layla. Her food was carefully measured out, her leash clipped on, her walk lengthened, all to take up as much time as possible.

 

When he finally set off in the dinghy around midday, he was already sick of his own thoughts that had crowded into his head. Arriving on the shore next to the cave put a weight in his heart heavier than the usual and it caught him with surprise. The cave loomed ominous before him today, rising up against the sky as though pushing the clouds away. Its mouth was jagged, the rocks rough, probably from the tumultuous high tide last night. Kieren sniffed the air and his stomach lurched. The smell of decay hung heavy in the air despite the cold breeze threatening to whisk it away out to sea, like a cloud of disease. As he approached the cave, he was scared of what he would find.

 

It was worse than before. Cluttered leaves and rocks still boarded up the mouth opening as usual, but it seemed that a splash of the water had jumped up and knocked out whole chunks of the cave mouth. Gaping holes met Kieren looking like wounds bared to the cold. Mold had settled into every bump and crevice and the whole structure looked ready to sink into the muddy ground.

 

Kieren couldn’t let it go that easy, however; he started up work again, cursing himself for every missed day.

 

Distraction had taken over and he had let it. It was as if he were fighting himself, flaunting his own rules he had set in place. Minimum visits to the pub. No contact with people beyond necessary. Etcetera. Discipline was the only thing he had keeping him sane up here and letting it slip for just a moment, convinced he could control it, had proven disastrous.

 

He couldn’t afford any more mistakes. Mistakes were never just mistakes, with him. They were always bigger and heavier, more like transgressions.

 

Kieren squeezed his eyes tight against that thought, trying to force it out of his brain. He turned his thoughts to Simon.

 

Last night, his research had proven true when he laid in bed with Simon after they’d fucked again. Turning his head, he’d whispered Simon’s name into his ear, a sick reminder that Kieren knew it, and predictably, Simon’s eyes had widened in the dark. He looked at Kieren, panicking, calculating whether he could trust him or not to keep the secret. It really funny; some people here were running, but this guy was sprinting.

 

Not that it had taken much effort to find out who he was; the guy was the first name on every TV news channel. If he was hoping to settle somewhere for more than a couple days, in Kieren’s opinion, he hadn’t run far enough.

 

Not that any of that mattered; Kieren had no taste for gang violence and he wouldn’t be caught up with one of their sort. They were messy people and Kieren kept to himself. He thought wistfully, in a moment of indulgence, of his old life, so distant from all that that the mobsters were just names rattled off by an announcer no one listened to.

 

A rock slipped in his distraction, shifting under his hands and falling out of place with a harsh scraping of stone on stone. Kieren fumbled to catch it but it slammed hard into his hand. Bouncing off, it fell free into the water below.

 

He stared down at his hand like it had betrayed him. The brush with nature made him feel futile, incapable of reversing the attack it had launched on his cave and now him. The rock plunged beneath the surface of the water and got swallowed up by the murky water as Kieren watched it. He realized with a start that nothing at all had changed. His hand may hurt, but whether the rock was on top of the pile against the cave or down below among the fish made no difference to anyone but him. No one cared but him; no one got hurt but him; no one changed the landscape and got punished for it except him.

 

A more natural order was usurping him. It didn’t like his work and wanted to let entropy take everything. Maybe it would be kinder to himself to let it. He clutched his wrist hard and felt the pain prick tears into his eyes. The cave would never be as he wanted it to; he could never get it back to its former state and keep it that way when nature was fighting him. All the wasted months and years crashed upon him in that moment, a pressure so great he dropped back from where he had been leaning against the rock wall. His knees were knocked out from under him and he fell to the ground. Another pain lit up in his legs where they had skinned themselves on the rocky wall.

 

How could he cope with overwhelming insignificance? It didn’t matter if the rocks were on the bed of the river or piling themselves into stone pyramids. After he was gone, they’d go back to the design they wanted. The work he had done to form them to his plan hadn’t mattered--they would act how they wanted to. Things would go on.

 

More than anything, he needed to let go, he knew. For a while now, the cave had been unhealthy for him, or at least pointless. What did it matter how things were? Did it matter if there were still creatures that wormed their way in through cracks and holes between the rocks? If his rules would only hurt him, then why did Kieren still have them? The construction of his life was threatening to unravel even as he thought those treasonous thoughts against himself. If he had rules only to break them, then what was the point?

 

His own voice from long ago came calling back to him, a reminder... _Amelia_ …

 

Sharply painful memories came jolting back to the front of his mind. They swarmed in, undeniable, cowing Kieren back to humility. Retreating back into who he was now, rules and all, let him escape who had been then. He had been ready to hit the edge and go over, just like the rock lost somewhere down there. But he couldn’t because of what he had done... _Amelia_...this was important.

 

She needed this. Deserved this, at least, after everything. He needed to do penance, in his own sacrilegious way.

 

She couldn’t even see him, she didn’t even know, but he felt her like a ghost on his shoulder, the empty space of her presence as a talisman of his guilt. She wasn’t making him do this; he just was, but it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough to balance the scales, yet he was resigned to it, the only fair path his life could follow now. It was his duty, with no exceptions or indulgences.

 

***

 

Over the next few days, Kieren didn’t do much of anything. He completed his usual chores around the lighthouse, mended the boat, and walked Layla. Every night, he went to the pub, a habit now. A luxury to have beer every night, but he couldn’t resist the opportunity to sit in the corner, hand wrapped around his bottle and see Simon. All night, he tried not to catch his eye. Simon was there every night before Kieren came and Kieren had a feeling he kept long hours underneath those TV screens. Luckily for Simon, the bartender didn’t really care for the news.

 

No one in the pub found his behavior unusual, and didn’t cast a second glance at him, oblivious to the news headlines if they were ever shown. Most people had weird tics and it didn’t fly to comment on them. Simon, at least, had picked this up quickly.

 

“Keep to your own business” was the unofficial motto of Warsaw and it suited them all just fine.

 

Some nights, when Kieren was feeling a little looser, the booze turning off those nagging centers of his brain that kept him on a strict no-people leash, he would leave the bar at the same time as Simon. It was the smallest thing, but when he saw Simon throw down a couple crumpled bills he would grab his coat and get the door for him.

 

Simon would always give him an uncomfortable smile. They had slept together a few more times after the first one in an irregular pattern that kept Kieren guessing when he was going to show up at the cabin with beer breath and condoms. He hadn’t come around for a while. Kieren hadn’t called or met up with him at the pub after the last time and Simon was probably confused about what to do. He would admit he was sending mixed messages. Giving the cold shoulder immediately after sex didn’t fall in line with stalking him at the pub every night.

 

In moments of weakness he would imagine pressing Simon up against the cold wall in the alley around the corner, too desperate to make it back to the cabin. It would be so cold, but his mouth, his body would be so warm...

 

These were the kinds of thoughts he regretted whenever he was sober again. Every night, he just let him pass by, out the door of the pub, and looked him over from head to toe.

 

Their paths would diverge after a minute of walking in silence and Kieren would watch him trudge off into the darkness, inland, further away from the path that would take Kieren down to the water. Kieren would look after him feeling a little bit lost and try to remember why he came here.

 

***

 

One day, he didn’t have much to do around the lighthouse so he laid around smoking cigarettes down until they burned the tips of his fingers. The trick was to toss them in the ashtray at the exact moment they would singe his fingertips without chickening out first. The cave across the bay lay neglected; he hadn’t gone back since the incident with the rock.

 

His hand had healed fine with some minor bruising, but ultimately nothing was sprained or broken and right now it clutched a sweating beer bottle just fine as he lifted his cigarette to his lips with the other.

 

He knew he was the very picture of a pathetic bum. It was Simon’s fault--dumb fucking Simon who had come in and thrown everything in Kieren’s life off balance. Hadn’t he been happy before him?

 

But--like always--he couldn’t blame Simon for long. He was too nice, too soft of a person for Kieren to be able to hate him. Despite Kieren’s shitty behavior towards him, defying all explanation, he cared. And Kieren couldn’t let that go.

 

He hadn’t deserved to be at the receiving end of Kieren’s frustration that day at the lighthouse, but the thought of apologizing twisted his stomach up. He couldn’t imagine staring into Simon’s deep, pitying eyes, getting through the words, and then shaking his hand like they were friends. The burning sensation in Kieren’s gut said they would never be just friends.

 

Kieren wasn’t a coward, though.

 

Before he could change his mind, he threw on his scarf and coat and was out the door, banging it shut behind him.

 

“Layla!” He called down to the beach. Luckily, there was little wind today, so his words carried far along the shore. Sure enough, in a couple moments, he heard her collar jingle before she came bounding into sight, thrilled at the sound of his voice.

 

He gave her a quick pat on the head and they set off up the path towards Simon’s house. Kieren hoped bringing Layla would set a friendly tone and make it clear this wouldn’t be a repeat of last time.

 

Trudging through the center of town, Kieren knew Simon close by. It wasn’t a large place, after all, so Simon couldn’t be that far out of the way.

 

His was a nice place, relatively. Honestly, it was shitty, but everything in Warsaw was crumbling a bit, and Simon’s place was nicer than most. All the houses sat on the main road in haphazard placements, unevenly spaced like they hadn’t been planned out beforehand. Some lived squashed together, sharing a mere strip of grass between them, and others were as far apart as neighbors in the country. Simon was one of the latter and as Kieren approached his front step he felt like a bug under a microscope. He wouldn’t be surprised if he turned to look at either house and the curtain twitched, betraying the neighbors’ curiosity.

 

Kieren knocked quickly, anxious to get inside.

 

He waited and waited but didn’t get an answer. A moment passed and he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to trudge back to the cabin in defeat.

 

From around the side of the house came a noise. He rounded it and came into the backyard and found Simon gardening. Crouched in the dirt with his tools strewn around him on the grass, he worked in denim overalls and a wide-brimmed straw hat. His bags of seeds rested beside him, tipped over onto the grass and spilling out, which gave the whole tableau a chaotic feel. Simon was absorbed in his work and didn’t notice Kieren come around the side.

 

The noise Kieren had heard was coming from him: Simon was singing. He was murmuring a quiet, peaceful song almost as if it was a hymn for his plants. It was a simple song that Simon kept repeating and by the third repetition, Kieren found himself singing it in his head. Too far away to make out the words, he hummed along to himself. It was such a contradiction to every hard edge Simon had showed him so far that he wanted to laugh and join in his infectious happiness.

 

“Is this the big, scary mob lawyer I’m supposed to be afraid of?” Kieren called out, making him jump and turn.

 

Promisingly, Simon didn’t glare at him. Instead he offered him a half-smile. When he spoke, his tone was light, nothing like the heavy, loaded “thank you” he received those nights when he held the door to the bar open for him.

 

“How do you know I’m not part of the mob?” Simon called back, joking. He had certainly gotten used to Kieren probing into his past quickly. But maybe it was because he knew Kieren wouldn’t do anything with the knowledge; he was no friend to police or mobsters.

 

“Nah,” Kieren said, approaching and shaking his head. “You’re much too prissy. Always with your sweaters and nice house. You wouldn’t last.” His tone was light, too.

 

Simon gave him a brief flash of a smile, then bent back to his garden.

 

“What’s going on here?” Kieren asked, bending to look, mostly just trying to fill the silence. He wasn’t ready to talk yet, but he couldn’t stand to linger here in silence while he worked up the courage.

 

Simon glanced at him sideways, like he knew what Kieren was doing, but let him.

 

“I’m just preparing the ground for when spring comes. It won’t be much longer now, and then I can plant the seeds.”

 

On second glance, Kieren could see that the fresh dirt was free of seeds. Simon’s hoe lay off to the side, flecked with dirt where it had been hacking into the cold, dry earth.

 

“But it’s still so cold.”

 

“Yes, but spring’s only a couple weeks away. Can’t be too ready,” Simon replied. He seemed happy enough to talk to Kieren, but a little confused as to where the conversation was going. Kieren couldn’t blame him.

 

He screwed up his face but bit his tongue at the thought of Simon planning to stay through spring. Little did he know that with the break in the weather would come the creeping urge to escape Warsaw, and he would leave. There wouldn’t be any time for planting vegetables.

 

“What brings you here today?” Simon asked. The dreaded question, but Kieren wasn’t going to back down now. He knew he had to say this, that Simon deserved it, even if he would forget about Kieren once Warsaw was in his rearview mirror.

 

“I wanted to apologize,” he said simply. “I shouldn’t have blown up at you, I was frustrated and scared and taking that out on you. No matter how justified it was.”

 

“Okay,” said Simon, nodding. Accepting the half-apology for what it was. Suddenly, Kieren was struck by Simon’s overwhelming patience, his unwavering tolerance, as if he were waiting for Kieren to grow into something that would take a while to a while to learn.

 

“But I am in control up here,” Kieren asserted bluntly. “I’m up here for something, not just to get away from something. This isn’t an escape, not like everyone else in the pub.”

 

Simon just nodded again and Kieren could tell he didn’t believe him. Simon frowned after a minute.

 

“You were scared?”

 

Implicitly, he was really asking why Kieren did it, why he had picked a fight, and why he was so cruel towards Simon’s gentle, easily declined passes. They both knew it.

 

He looked long and hard into his eyes, trying to decide whether he should tell the truth. People prodding into his past was nothing new--a thousand people have tried it on him at the bar--but this time felt different. Kieren didn’t feel like a piece of entertainment, but rather the object of someone’s genuine concern. And that scared him all over again.

 

As his silence stretched out, Simon looked away, disappointed. Kieren felt the moment slipping away from him and panicked. His one shot to be redeemed in someone else’s eyes was slipping away. Or would he be condemned all over again?

 

“Wait,” he said, reaching out a hand to brush Simon’s shoulder. Simon looked back up at him, eyes expectant, as if tapping their feet. For all his grace, Simon didn’t coddle Kieren.

 

At least if Kieren regretted telling him, Simon would be gone before summer. That was his last, comforting thought before he opened his mouth to speak.

 

“You scared me. You wouldn’t let me go. I still don’t know why you won’t,” he said, meeting Simon’s gaze. “And that’s risky.”

 

“Risky?”

 

Kieren blinked at him, uncomprehending. “Wow, you’re pushy aren’t you? We just met, but no hesitation.”

 

A shrug from Simon.

 

“You’re really that naive, to just trust people instantly?” Kieren exclaimed. He said it like it was a bad thing, but the truth was, he was a little jealous. He put up a lot of walls for safety, but mostly he was stuck behind them. He’d never know how many missed experiences, alternate lives he’d left behind when he’d moved to Warsaw.

 

“I’m just ready to love,” Simon said softly, gently enough to make Kieren cringe from the raw emotion in his voice. Kieren heard his own breath catch. It was so intimate, too intimate for the setting--the two of them crouched in the dirt, getting green knees. A deep ache took up in his chest, familiar like an old friend.

 

“Well,” he said, trying to shake the intensity of the moment off and sound like he didn’t care about what he said next. “For most people--for me--it’s risky. To start up something up with someone. I don’t have a good track record. The last time I got attached to someone, it went far and deep and way too much of both. For a while, it was amazing. But then it got messy, I made it get messy and I ended up hurting someone. Ruining their life, actually.” He broke off, choked up. He hoped Simon hadn’t seen.

 

Simon just looked at him with sad eyes.

 

“So that’s why I’m up here. My fault, my penance. In Warsaw I can be in almost total isolation, so I can straighten myself out before I go back into the world. Not back to--what I had before. That’s gone. But to something hopefully...more.”

 

He looked up at the sky, now blurry. It was a short story, told in a few quick sentences, like it hadn’t been such a huge chunk of his life. It struck him suddenly that he had the power to rewrite it--if he wanted too, he could let the past die and never look at it again. Simon would never know and he could forget about it once and for all. No one would ever call him on it because no one would ever know better.

 

It was a dangerous temptation. Deep down, he knew he wouldn’t choose it, however. Too indulgent. No one would know about his time spent up here, either, but he still did it. He was just trying, slowly, steadily, to like himself again. Resurrect the person inside himself who he actually liked and cover over the one of the surface he despised. That person would never let him abandon this mission, now that it had begun. Seeing it through was the only way to ensure that he would come back and Kieren would be a good person again. For no one if not himself.

 

Coming back to himself, he was uncomfortably aware of Simon’s gaze on him. He was wearing that deep, sad look again that Kieren hated. Pulling himself together, he set his jaw hard and gritted his teeth against his memories. There was enough pity just in Simon’s look, he shouldn’t add to it.

 

“None of that excuses last week, though. I should have told you before that this wasn’t going to happen. I’m sorry.” Kieren bowed his head and waited for Simon to say something. Waited for him to walk away since nothing was going to happen.

 

“Kieren,” Simon began in a quiet voice, almost unintelligible. It was strange to be whispering secrets when the light of day shone down on only the two of them and the dirt strewn around them. No one to overhear and yet the moment deserved the quiet hush of Simon’s careful voice. “Kieren, why are you so cruel to yourself?”

 

Reaching over gently, he brushed his fingers underneath Kieren’s chin, cupping it in his hand. Kieren looked down and refused to meet his eyes.

 

He was quiet for a moment as no explanation seemed enough to explain the necessity of being here. Simon knew the barebones, but he didn’t know the painful details. With his hand under Kieren’s chin, his eyes full of belief in Kieren, Kieren felt like crying. Simon was so good to him and he wasn’t good in return.

 

“Oh, Simon. You don’t know what I did.”

 

“I think,” Simon said, making Kieren meet his eyes. “That you let your past consume you. That maybe some things should be forgiven with time.”

 

At Kieren’s quick shake of the head, he continued, “It’s been _years_. Whatever you’re doing...it hasn’t worked yet. It probably never will.”

 

Kieren could hear in his tone that the addition of the “yet” was purely for Kieren’s sake. It wasn’t enough. Jerking his chin out of Simon’s hand, he stood up and tried to quell the nausea suddenly rising in him. It would work, it absolutely would and Simon just didn’t know anything about him. He gave his opinion, but it was dumb and uninformed, exactly the kind of advice he should expect from a Warsaw tourist.

 

_Gone by summer, Gone by summer_ , he repeated to himself. He didn’t know what he had wanted to get out of this conversation. The forgiveness he was given had also insulted the six years he had spent here.

 

He had to leave, but didn’t know where to go. The lighthouse and the cabin seemed too loaded with the past right now and the pub was would only have a couple people drooped over the midafternoon bar. But he had to get out of here. If he didn’t, Simon’s gaze was going to melt him down again and stay. He couldn’t listen to what he said anymore.

 

He had developed a process for his own good. If nothing else, he had to stick to it; without that he was another man lost in this wilderness of a town. Yet here was Simon, offering him a chance to send out roots, if not put them down.

 

Simon wanted to know and then forgive, confident that the one would progress into the other unhindered. The things Kieren had done, though...he still wasn’t sure if he could speak his crimes aloud and survive with enough breath left over to fill his lungs. When he thought of Amelia, his whole body still broke out in sweat, making his skin feel slimy to the touch.

 

He was still wavering, standing above Simon and looking away, hovering at an invisible crossroads to make his decision. Simon got to his feet beside him, giving him a knowing look that Kieren couldn’t quite find it in him to hate him for. Leaning in close, Simon pressed a kiss to his lips. Slow and sweet, it was layered with intent as if Simon was telling Kieren everything he wanted to say through their lips. What he had said, he stood by. A hand snaked around his lower back, pressing up against Simon, and Kieren found, oddly, that it felt nice and safe. If only he could stay there forever.

 

He knew that this conversation was over and that to Simon, he probably tasted sad. He felt a bitter sting of guilt at that, thinking about how Simon, who was so nice, who he would never tell what he did, didn’t deserve this. If he could help it, Simon would never know that either.

 

But maybe you were allowed two mistakes in your life.

 

***

 

Deep into March the snow still laid thick on the ground in Warsaw. Without the addition of new snow, the old churned itself over daily with the help of cars, creating a blackened mush that added to overall decor of the town. The overall effect was what looked like a snow junkyard with some buildings plopped into the middle.

 

Against his better judgement, Kieren slept with Simon again. Turned out all it took was an extra nip in the cold, helped by a couple drinks at the pub, to make him miss the warmth of another body next to his in bed.

 

And then it was every night, or almost every, and Kieren was waking up every morning and telling Simon to get lost again. They didn’t have any pretensions of affection and Simon was hurt by his cold shoulder come sunrise. The nights slid by slow and long, as if hesitant to let time pass as normal.

 

Late at night, after they’ve fucked and the chill started to creep back into Kieren’s bones again, he would get scared. Irrationally, he knew, embarrassingly, he was certain, but he couldn’t stop himself from shivering. In the dark this thing always looked the worst, suddenly ugly enough he wanted to fling himself out of bed. Every night he risked it all--his whole plan here--for something that would always, always remain as nothing. It was an insignificant thing, not even worth the worry, but it scared him just the same. He couldn’t mess this up; nothing was as important as preserving his life here. He had a job to do.

 

But always, teeth chattering, sleep would slowly slid in and claim him, his thoughts drooping and fading until he slipped out of consciousness. The dawn would banish his troubles again with the reminder, every darker mornings, that spring was coming soon. Spring would be good for him. He was confident it would bring renewal, solitude, and focus so he could get back on track. The details of the winter would be forgotten. Everything was permanent for a season up here.

 

Kieren was still quiet during sex and Simon was still loud, or, at least, louder than him. They didn’t say much beforehand or during, and didn’t chat in the pub. Mostly, they communicated through looks. But god, was it good. Kieren couldn’t ever remember being so overwhelmed by one person and he caught himself thinking about Simon during the days, unable to forget the nights.

 

Simon never said anything about it but Kieren knew it was good for him too. He felt it in the shudder of his body underneath Kieren, in the press of his tongue down Kieren’s throat when he arrived on his doorstep. He was always late and always making up for it.

 

Though Kieren never asked about it, he could sense a twinge of something desperate in the way Simon kissed him--intense and hard, crashing his mouth against Kieren’s like he couldn’t let go--that made Kieren suspect he had his own issues to deal with.

 

But he shrugged it off. It was none of his business.

 

They never spoke about the garden, either, the closest they had come to showing each other their cards and the merest hint that they cared beyond the bedroom. Kieren had pretended nothing had happened and Simon had fallen in line. The glint of sharp pain that had manifested in his eye since then Kieren attributed to something else--maybe the law was catching up to him.

 

He didn’t know what Simon thought of him for the casual, rough sex. He didn’t know that he should care. Didn’t he have a right to no judgement? The constant, pressing reminder of the approaching spring, though, quelled any of his anxious thoughts.

 

The only ugly moments were the ones in which Simon would try to talk after sex. Kieren would have fucked him and then collapsed back against the mattress, ready to fall asleep. Simon, though, wouldn’t be done for the night.

 

Lying against Kieren’s chest as if they were lovers with some amount of love involved, he would murmur things to him, trying to get him to respond. It was all useless, relentless chatter. Some poking and prodding at Kieren’s personal business that used thinly veiled tactics to get him to talk about himself. He wanted Kieren’s past, too. His past, his greatest--and only--secret. It turned out he gave the guy an inch and he wanted a whole mile.

 

In the strange moments when he hung between sleeping and dreaming, Kieren would imagine Simon as some kind of witch. His one mission was to get Kieren’s secrets, gather them all up so that he could use them in a spell against him. One they were all harvested, dragged out of Kieren’s body against his will, Simon would drop them into his giant cauldron and let it steam up. When he was done, he had made a curse. Kieren would be stuck in Warsaw forever without anyone to talk to. It would just be him, the empty street signs, and the dusty liquor glasses in the bar. Simon had condemned him to an eternity of loneliness.

 

Then he would shake himself awake again. He couldn’t stand another nightmare to be added to the recurring list.

 

It pissed Kieren off, though, the coaxing out of his emotions and thoughts. Sometimes he did feel like Simon was collecting evidence against him in a kind of interrogation. All of it reminded Kieren of his first boyfriend, obsessive and possessive to a fault. When it got to that point, he would usually snap something at Simon to shut him up and he would, leaving Kieren to his lonely, guilty thoughts.

 

So they continued on like this until spring kicked in fully, opening the blossoms on flowers and bringing the salmon upstream to mate. The weather became bearable and the first signs of people trickling out of town, migrating back to somewhere less desolate, showed themselves with the resumption of the local bus that was supposed to run all year round but didn’t.

 

Kieren had new chores. The lighthouse changed with the seasons and he retired his old list of daily tasks along with his hat and scarf until next season and brought out the new one. Spring meant a lot more attention to the wildlife around the lighthouse who liked to get in through cracks and take up residence in the beacon. Kieren always had to chase them out.

 

And then there was the matter of Simon.

 

Or rather, there wasn’t. Not wanting to know exactly when Simon was leaving town, not wanting to commemorate a last time, Kieren had ended the meet-ups with Simon a couple weeks ago.

 

He made himself stop looking for him in the bar, in the supermarket, trying to catch his eye. It was time to resign himself back to his old, Simon-free life. He had more than enough work on the lighthouse to do, after all.

 

But he couldn’t deny that he missed his skin.

 

Maybe he would paint it.

 

***

 

So the cold broke, and Kieren was happy again. The winter was one long nightmare, as it usually was, throwing its worst at him and pummelling the town of Warsaw into submission under its control. It acted as punisher in his life over and over again, refusing to relinquish Kieren from his grasp until he couldn’t bear it any longer, and finally, blissfully, spring swooped in to save him.

 

Now it was July and Kieren felt his old confidence floating back to him every day he woke up to the sound of the cardinals in the trees outside and Layla’s warm, steady breaths beside him. His old routine was returning and with it, his previous certainty of his place among the activities of the lighthouse and its habitat. Spring fit back into his bones like a puzzle piece lost in the chaos, finally found and returned to its proper place.

 

Warsaw was, unlike most seaside towns, merely comfortable in the winter. It boasted of no beach, no tropical weather to draw tourists, and those leaving in May often outnumbered those who arrived. Kieren was excited to exchange his heavy coat for a light fleece jacket, until the days turned cold again, seeming to revert to its natural state.

 

Kieren’s daily routine returned to simplicity again, as well. No more casual hookups; he was punishing himself for the winter. Instead, he took more frequent trips to the supermarket despite their hatred of Layla and took her on more walks.

 

She was happy for the extra time together, always bounding along by his feet whenever they went on a walk. The warm weather meant a break in the isolation for her--now she could stay outside for hours without Kieren’s supervision. All the nearby scrubs and tidal pools became her domain now, but she never wandered far. Without Kieren saying it, she knew not to explore too much. They both wanted to stay close to each other.

 

The plans for the lighthouse came along quickly, though he worried not quick enough. If he didn’t lay down a primary base coat soon, it wouldn’t be finished before the early cold of September. And he was determined to finish. The thought of another winter of looking at the same dreary lighthouse every day, memorizing the scuff marks and stains, filled him with dread.

 

More and more, his thoughts turned to leaving Warsaw. He dreamed at night--in his most secretive, quiet moments--of a life outside of this place. More than anything, he wanted to raise a happy family with a husband who loved him. Kieren couldn’t think of anything better than being happy. These dreams were always saturated with bright, happy colors and made the dark tableau of his bedroom all the more depressing when he woke again.

 

He couldn’t deny it anymore; he wanted to leave.

 

But never once did he plan for any kind of departure. It was out of the question. The plan, instead, calling for heavier work and a rededication to his goal. Instead, he threw himself even further into the long-term, all-consuming plans for the lighthouse, determined to overrule himself.

 

One night, he even tried praying again. He’d had another dream in which he was happy, living a life with Layla in some simple suburb, and finally managed to shake himself awake. The dream felt so close to being real he wondered for a few moments if he wouldn’t wake her and leave right then and there. But he knew he wouldn’t. That left him with a strange sensation in his chest and as he put his hand to his cheek, he found that he was crying silent tears.

 

Without knowing what he was doing, without regarding the fact that he hadn’t been religious since his boyhood, he pushed himself up onto his knees on his mattress. It felt dramatic, like a stage, and yet there was no one looking. He pressed his palms together, bent his head, and tried to find God. Minutes and minutes went by. He didn’t know whether he was searching or sending up prayers that would be received later or doing fuck all. In the end, nothing happened. No god came to help him. He didn’t get told what to do. In the end, it was still just him, alone, kneeling on his bed trying to search out a source of hope.

He still went to the pub; that much hadn’t changed. He had always gone to the pub before, though. He would constantly catch himself comparing himself to a time “before”-- “before,” he kept saying, but before what he didn’t know or wouldn’t think of. The only thing that mattered now was his day-to-day life, unremarkable and unseen by anyone except Layla.

 

One day he was strolling through town on a walk to nowhere when he was shocked to see the figure of none other than Simon cross the town square, typical ratty sweater exchanged for a lightweight sleeved t-shirt. His walk was his typical confident stride accompanied by an air of knowledgeable superiority and just seeing him sparked both hatred and excitement in Kieren simultaneously.

 

Kieren searched Simon’s hands like a desperate man, trying to find a suitcase in them, and, finding none, forced to consider that he wasn’t leaving. It was July, it was ridiculous to expect him to leave now, in the thrall of good weather, but still Kieren stared at those pale hands, searching as they trailed along beside Simon as he walked. Within his dazed mind, somewhere, he realized that Simon’s knuckles sported some bruises. Kieren was suddenly struck by how little he knew about Simon’s life. When they had been together, Kieren thought that he knew the general gist and the gist was that Simon’s life was simple and unimpressive. Millions of people had committed crimes and were on the run, nothing too special.

 

Not that his bruises refuted that--if anything, they corroborated it, because they meant that Simon wasn’t a good enough criminal to outsmart the guys chasing him. He wasn’t dead yet, but if Kieren was honest, he wouldn’t bet the guy would make it through the next ten years on the run. There was something too domestic about Simon.

 

He shook himself out of his grimness. Simon was still here and he had brought the people following him to Warsaw. Not that Kieren was concerned for the town’s wellbeing—everyone here was as tough as him, or so they claimed--but he was suddenly struck again with Simon’s own past as a reality, and as one that threatened to collide with his own.

 

The guy seemed destined to be trouble for him.

 

Simon glanced over at him sharply, meeting Kieren’s glare across the square. A shock rippled through him, though he didn’t know why. Simon glared back and to any bystander, it must seem as though they hated one another. Kieren, despite himself, was beginning to believe that; a bit of distance between him and the winter had him questioning why he ever even started up with Simon.

 

Making up his mind in an instant, Kieren strode across the square to Simon, ready to confront him about his continued presence in Warsaw when he had let Kieren believe he would be leaving.

 

He was marching towards Simon, assembling his accusations in his head--secrets, lies, callousness--when a cloud above them shifted, casting sunlight down onto Simon’s head. Kieren stumbled, shocked, caught off guard by how beautiful Simon looked standing there, glaring through the bright light. It was enough that Kieren paused, halfway to him, feeling something instinctive halt his steps and quell his anger. Simon raised his head to the sky, squinting.

 

Something in him had shifted--suddenly, he didn’t want to ruin Simon’s day. He could live without causing the smile to drop from his face and knowing with a sick pleasure that he had caused it; it all felt so fruitless. He was so nice, and Kieren fell so short for him every time.

 

At some point, he was exploiting him and he knew it. The eternal hope of redemption--even forgiveness--rested within Simon somehow, an external party to this, and Kieren was simultaneously clinging onto and rejecting it both. Every time he did so, he left Simon a confused wreck. He never showed it, but Kieren knew he took a toll.

 

Simon glanced away from the sun, fixing back on Kieren. Without realizing what he was doing, Kieren gave him a nod--a friendly acknowledgement, but distant. Then he pushed back on his heels, backing away, letting Simon continue on his walk through town uninterrupted. Quietly, he turned around and headed back the way he came, towards the lighthouse.

 

So he was still here and he was existing, moving along fine in his life without Kieren. Somehow filling his days in a town where there was nothing else to do. Maybe he was bothering someone else, Kieren thought grudgingly. Maybe he’d picked up someone else at the bar and they would fuck him with a smile and Simon would wake up next to them the next morning and they’d have breakfast in bed. Sounded like a dream for being on the run.

 

But it was better, he told himself, Simon should be happy. He wasn’t a good guy--mob lawyer didn’t really prompt “not guilty” on the stand--but relative to this town, he was. Hell, at least he did honest illegal work. The rest of the bottom-dwellers here were fucked to hell personally--family issues, romantic issues, the whole shebang. They’d all hurt people, but Simon? He was just someone who had run from some straightforwardly bad criminals.

 

That was a blessing, even if he didn’t know it. Somehow, in this dutch-tilted reality, Simon was the best guy in town.

 

And that made Kieren the worst.

 

***

 

When Kieren got back from the pub drunk that night, he took a quick shower, stumbled out, and immediately threw up on his bed. Layla ran distressed around his feet, nosing at his legs to ask what was wrong. He felt a wave of gratitude towards her; she was so good to him and only ever wanted to know what was wrong. She didn’t care about his baggage and she didn’t pass judgements.

 

He looked down at his sick and felt tears prick his eyes. It was fruitless; there was still bad things in him. Toxic things, that he couldn’t keep in and couldn’t stop inflicting on people no matter how he tried. Gently, carefully, he laid his head down on the bed next to the stain. It stank and made Kieren want to retch, but for some perverse reason he couldn’t stop staring at it.

 

It was a repeating pattern in his life, in himself, as if it was engraved on his bones that he only ever had one choice that he could make. Even if he wanted to make another, it wasn’t possible.

 

Kieren felt a few tears slide down his cheeks onto the bed and he ignored them. Warsaw was supposed to be a new escape, a place where he could get a do-over that God so infrequently handed out. It was his place he could change and move forward as a person. If only given the time to convalesce, he was sure he would improve.

 

It was all a mirage--he knew this now, the thought had been creeping in for some time but the sight of Simon in the square today had slapped it in his face--he was the same as he was before. Something in his look or in the way he had looked up at the parting clouds had sparked a realization in Kieren. People didn’t change and they didn’t get redemption. Maybe redemption was in his next life, he would be reincarnated as something terrible, but certainly not here.

 

A voice in his head spoke up, tried to argue with him, but whether it was the vestiges of his hope or a memory of Simon’s voice murmuring too-nice things to him, it was wrong.

 

Faintly, he felt a pain in his back realized that he had curled over his bent legs in the fetal position. The ache in his lumbar was insistently reminding him of his age.

 

Roughly, he made himself sit up and found himself staring at the space next to the bed, a place where he would kneel every night, if praying had worked.

 

He remembered a time where he would see Amelia kneeling beside the bed nightly, head bent so far over her folded hands that he thought her back would get stuck in that shape, a giant C. But every night she would rise up, straighten it out, and get into bed with him, red marks on her knees from the long minutes had spent with God. Or so he assumed. He never asked her about it and she never volunteered.

 

That was how he remembered a lot of their nights in bed together--silent. They were both quiet people, but he knew their quiet wasn’t out of habit but rather a lack of interest. He knew it from the start and he had ignored it.

 

This time Kieren made it to the kitchen before he retched again, making it into the sink. Layla trotted along behind him, still looking at him with her big sad eyes. He looked away from her; he couldn’t stand her goodness right now. It felt almost like a punishment, to carry her faith in him and know he didn’t deserve it.

 

He let his head hang over the sink, a gross thread of saliva trailing down, connecting him to the garbage disposal. He was tempted suddenly to lean forward and let it swallow him up, sucking him out of this place, this existence. The cool metal would caress his head as he was tugged down and slowly sliding him out of reality. Then he would end up wherever the water came from, maybe a treatment plant, maybe the sewers. It would be dark and lonely, but he was used to it. Wandering around, he would walk through the long passageways like a ghost, unseen by anyone, but irrevocably existing. Eventually, he would wither away, not to haunt the tunnels anymore.

 

Absolution--an absolute ending.

 

Suddenly, he thought of how Amelia would remove her wedding ring every night before bed. To keep it safe, she said. She always said she tossed in her sleep. Kieren could never remember anything but her lying stiff as a board.

 

Another dry heave, but he was out of beer to throw up. Now he was left to contemplate this disgusting, dirty feeling, and his sobering thoughts.

 

“Amelia,” he said to his hollow sink, just to feel the word on his tongue. The last time he had said it to her, she had turned away. Kieren gripped the sink and tried to pull himself back to this moment, once and for all. He felt cheated; the drinks were supposed to make the memories stop.

 

His spit ran down the side of the sink, taking its time before dropping into the central hole. Kieren still felt sick.

 

Nothing was resolved, nothing was on track to being resolved. It was all a great pantomime, designed and played by him in the happy face of denial. Years of his life spent--wasted--trying to balance out those he had with Amelia.

 

His last thought, before he slips into a slumped, ungraceful kind of sleep against the kitchen cabinets, was an imagining of where Amelia was right now, a kind of present-memory. He saw her happy, with a great husband and those kids she always wanted. People around her to treasure her and cherish every moment. Enough attention and love showered upon her that she forgot the time with Kieren Walker like a bad dream. Enough good memories to cover that one up--a life full of life, no longer married to a straw man. He hoped it was true.

 

***

 

A loon descended from the sky, flapping its wings, and settled into the little inlet to the side of the lighthouse. It’s long legs stretched into the little area of sand that was bordered on one side by a cliff of rocks and the other by the sea. Calmly watching the sea, it let the waves ebb and flow around it, unmoved by the shifting sand underfoot. It seemed completely at peace with the movement of the ocean.

 

Watching it, Kieren took a swig of his beer and leaned heavily against the porch banister, chin slumping onto his chest. He was determined to remain here all day.

 

This morning had sharply awakened Kieren with the bright sunlight streaming in through the windows and onto the kitchen floor where he lay. Combined with a crick in his neck, his back had began protesting of some pain, which didn’t stop him from slouching over on the porch.

 

He ignored the pain, looking for relief in the next sip of beer and the next. Left alone in between the twinges from his back and those from his memories was all he had left. At least the loon looked thoughtless and happy.

 

Squinting to see across the bay, he looked past the loon to the other shore. There, pathetically, lay the desolate ruins of his work, crumbled down and strewn along the bank like a kicked-over sand castle. Kieren didn’t even have any sadness for it. If he had wanted to complete it he knew he would have; he could admit that much.

 

Back on this bank, his bottle was almost empty. With a twinge of annoyance, he drained it, shamelessly tipping it back until the beer hit the back of his throat. Then he tossed the bottle to the side to clink and roll against the two or three others on the porch.

 

Kieren had already forgotten about those. He remembered distantly, like it was someone else, that he had been drinking steadily since he could stand up this morning.

 

He heard footsteps coming down the path and then a voice breaking the oppressive quiet by calling out a greeting.

 

“Hello?”

 

For a moment he thought, foolishly, of hiding, not wanting to face anyone who might want to come and visit the lighthouse, or worse, him. But he couldn’t muster up the energy to move himself.

 

He laid there waiting to be found, realizing all the while the footsteps approached that he was really drunk, maybe too drunk to make his mouth move and form words. Or worse: too drunk to stop it.

 

And of course his visitor was Simon.

 

When he rounded the bend, Kieren looked away, not wanting to see Simon’s face when he locked eyes on his pathetic state. Simon would size up the empty beer bottles, Kieren’s stubble, and clothes from yesterday and get this piteous look on his face like Kieren was a sinner and Simon was Jesus Christ coming to save him.

 

“Wow, you look good, Kieren,” Simon called out sarcastic as he approached the porch.

 

Kieren was a little shocked. He hadn’t expected a different reaction from the usual babying mother, doting boyfriend. Whichever was closest. Something still couldn’t keep his voice from going soft on Kieren’s name, though.

 

Kieren just turned his head and looked up at Simon, letting the scene speak for itself. He wasn’t pretending anymore. If he had counted his beer right, then the swing of his head was a little off kilter and his eyes, when they stared into Simon’s, would be fully bloodshot. Subtle wasn’t for him anymore.

 

“Christ, Kieren,” Simon dropped the gruffness, but didn’t make any moves to touch him. He would have before, Kieren thought. Before Kieren had cut him off. He would have cradled Kieren’s cheek and held him for a minute until Kieren pushed him off, dropping a mask of hurt over Simon’s face.

 

He hadn’t been good to this man. He wasn’t sure if he was capable of changing that now, even if given the time. Christ, he felt like a mess in human form, a machine that broke the people stupid enough to get in his path. If he had any decency now, he would scream and yell for Simon to run, to get away from him, because things could only get worse.

 

He wished that when he opened his mouth, the first thing he said wouldn’t be hurtful.

 

“Come around looking for something, Simon?” Taunting, sarcastic in return. He wished he was a kinder man or at least one that wasn’t openly hostile. He wished he wasn’t himself--trapped in this place and its mindset.

 

Simon dropped the sarcastic tone.

 

“Kieren, are you okay? What’s--how did this happen since yesterday? Did you get news, did you…” Simon trailed off when Kieren just laughed at him.

 

“No, nothing happened to me, Simon, just myself my bad fucking thoughts. It's just me.” He groped behind himself for a beer, but his hands only scratched the empty porch deck. He had already drunk the last beer.

 

Simon sat down heavily next to him. After a moment, Kieren felt a hesitant hand rest on his shoulder, a warm pressure that, despite himself, comforted him.

 

He glanced over at Simon. It was curiously intimate for them, even Simon, a simple, meaningful touch. He met Simon’s eyes staring back at him with the kind of emotion that made him a little afraid. For one moment he wanted to pretend that they were boyfriends, that this behavior was normal between them; Kieren could always rely on Simon hold him close at the end of the day.

 

Something inside him unconsciously gave way to his fantasy and he leaned his head against Simon’s shoulder, wanting his arms around him but too proud to ask.

 

Simon grunted when Kieren laid his head back against him, and Kieren realized he must have plunked his head down harder than he anticipated. His coordination must be a little off after seven beers.

 

Kieren mumbled an apology, hoping that Simon wouldn’t pull away.

 

He laid there for a while, eyes closed, resting in the moment dreading the next one when Simon would scold him for getting drunk. Without wanting to leave, he didn’t want to stay here any longer, among his dirty beer bottles and grimy clothes. Every time he felt Simon’s eyes flick over him, sizing him up, tallying Kieren’s damage, he felt another prickle of shame.

 

He couldn’t look up at him again. He was too scared of seeing that expression full-on. Peripheral glances were all he could take despite a deep, buried part of himself whispering otherwise. Betraying himself he wanted something tangible he could hold up as solid evidence someone gave a damn about him.

 

Simon let him lie there for a while as they watched the sun sink low in the sky to cast its five o’clock glow, signaling the day over. Soon Kieren felt a gentle nudge against his knee from Simon and knew their time was up.

 

It had been a couple hours of complete silence that hadn’t felt quiet. Kieren, during it, had migrated from his head on Simon’s shoulder to leaning fully back against his chest, their legs entangled and heads leaning together like a pair of lovebirds. If it was a different moment, or a less sincere one, Kieren would have laughed at them.

 

He was reluctant to move, but Simon whispered that it was time to move inside.

 

“Let’s get you to bed, Kier,” he said, helping him up.

 

As Kieren let Simon pull him up, he spared a glance back to the beach. The sand stood empty; the loon was gone. It must have taken off hours ago, he knew, off to live its life on other shores, brushing the Warsaw sand from its wings in flight. The grains would drip from its wings over the places it went and fall to earth, insignificant in the vast anonymity that the world offered.

 

Suddenly, Kieren felt the full weight of his exhaustion, a full night’s terrible sleep and the hunger of only eating beer all day. He let Simon half carry him into the cabin and help him onto his bed, grateful for the soft mattress underneath. For a few minutes more, he was half-conscious of Simon moving around, putting a bottle of water out for him and settling into a chair he dragged in from the kitchen. But if Kieren, from within his dreamless stupor, felt the bed shift and the warmth of another body embrace his, then he didn’t object. It was a relief to stop fighting himself at last.

 

***

 

Kieren woke much more gently than his abrupt start yesterday. A soft light filtered in through the rags he used for curtains and the warmth of his bed felt like a cocoon, keeping him drowsy for several more minutes.

 

He let his eyes droop back shut and soaked up the rare peaceful moment. It was ironic that within the town he had gone to to find true quiet, he had only ever found it in a couple places.

 

Wondering if Simon was up yet, Kieren shifted and, to his surprise, realized Simon’s arms were draped around him. His brain refused to apply the word “cuddled” to what they were doing, but the feeling of his arms around Kieren felt nice. At one time, that would have freaked Kieren out, brain flooded with guilty thoughts of Amelia, and he would have pulled away and out of bed. But he didn’t have the energy to do that today. It seemed so pointless.

 

He knew he was bargaining with himself--it was in his nature to cut corners. But without Simon, he didn’t know if he could keep staying here. He might drink himself to death; he might lose his mind.

 

A couple nights ago, when he had been lying in bed with Layla at his feet, he had struck a deal with himself, a resolution he felt was a good compromise with himself. He could have Simon, but he would have to stay longer. Whenever he first wanted to leave, whenever he felt his time was done in Warsaw, he would have to stay longer. There would be more to resolve now. A couple secret tears had slipped down Kieren’s face in the dark, but he knew it was only fair. Time for Amelia and time for Simon. For something that he had chosen for himself, it felt ominously like a life sentence.

 

For now, he just pulled Simon’s arms closer around him, lazily taking his hand and tracing the lines of his palm over and over again until he could do it by heart. If only he could shake the feeling that the further he memorized Simon’s hand, the further he was from leaving. Even as he relaxed into this, Warsaw was closing in around him like quicksand.

 

Simon stirred a couple minutes later and Kieren looked over his shoulder at him with a smile. As Simon blinked the sleep out of his eyes, Kieren leaned over and laid a hand on Simon’s chest, resting on its bumps and ridges previously unknown to him. After a moment, he lowered his lips to where his hand had just been, kissing over Simon’s torso and steadily creeping downwards.

 

He was halfway down when Simon shifted away from him, leaving Kieren hanging in the air.

 

“Kieren, I—”

 

Kieren pushed himself back away, hurt. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Although--another thought struck him--this must be it, this was the moment Simon was going to tell him he was leaving town for good. It was the conversation he had tried so hard to avoid.

 

“Simon, just go,” he said with a sigh, closing his eyes shut, wishing he could open them again and the sheets would be empty where Simon had been. But he would never let Kieren go like that.

 

Simon recoiled, indignant. “Jesus, Kier, do you have to be so _you_? You’re so fucking cold.” His voice hissed, making Kieren suck in his breath. There was a strange sensation in his chest, like something tugging on his sleeve, a warning whistle before danger hit.

 

“Oh, _I’m_ cold, that’s right,” he retorted. Their position had changed on the bed; no longer was Kieren wrapped up in Simon’s arms, but instead facing Simon from one end of the mattress, Simon on the other. Battle lines were clearly drawn. They were both by nature quick to draw. In between them, the leftover warmth curled up from the bed and dissipated into the cool air of morning.

 

The blankets were stripped back, exposing the barren innards of the bed and marking a smooth no-man’s land that neither Kieren nor Simon crossed. They had gotten on their guards so quickly--after just a few sharp words to each other--that Kieren was reminded of his later days with Amelia. He curled his hands into fists, nails digging in, trying to force that thought from his mind.

 

“I’m the cold one, of course,” he continued. “Never mind the fact that I haven’t left you, I’m still right here, like I always am.”

 

The skin around Simon’s eyes tightened imperceptibly. His tone was cautiously level when he spoke. “You aren’t here, Kieren, not really. You’re glacial; a person embedded in the middle of an iceberg that, if I work long enough, will let one centimeter of ice melt. With the amount of effort you take...you’re not worth the time.”

 

“Good thing we’re just fucking, then.” Kieren couldn’t deny the sting of Simon’s words.

 

Simon’s face smoothed over, all emotion wiped away. “Good thing.”

 

And that was it. Kieren slid off the bed, grabbing around chairs and floors for his pants his shirt; it felt uncomfortable to be naked now. He could feel Simon’s stare on his back, his ass, and fervently wished for a moment that it would make Simon stay. They could fall back into bed and Simon wouldn’t leave and they wouldn’t speak. No words meant no arguing.

 

But that wasn’t real life and Kieren couldn’t ever keep his damn mouth shut around Simon. He couldn’t let him go that easy. As he’s buttoning his shirt, looking away, he asked, “So where will you go next?”

 

A silence fell upon the room. Simon considering him, attempting to parse out his motives for asking, what it would cost him to answer. Unable to bear it, Kieren stared out the window, out at the frozen shrubbery, overgrown and rotten, his hand frozen on his half-done button. Waited for the moments to tick by. When Simon’s voice would come, he would be released by it, unbinding his muscles, as if waiting for an answer was worse than hearing it. An unbearable three seconds of foot-tapping as opposed to an eternity of knowing.

 

A moment passed, and then another. Kieren’s gaze was locked onto the dying trees for dear life. Then he heard the floorboards creak behind him, tracing their way around the bed, but he still jumped when Simon suddenly, gently, laid his hand on Kieren’s shoulder, twisting him away from his reverie.

 

It wasn’t a pull—more like a yank, a confrontation, a demand that Kieren face him when he spoke.

 

“What?” Simon’s angry tone was back, sharp like a slap across the face. Kieren made himself raise his gaze from his half-buttoned shirt and look at Simon.

 

“Look, I don’t want to say goodbye. Where we act like we were important to each other, worth enough for that.”

 

Simon didn’t say anything, just rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, pushing in until Kieren thought he would mash his eyeballs to a pulp. When he drew back, his face was red and patchy.

 

“You...wouldn’t say goodbye to me?” His tone sounded choked, forced, as if he was trying to speak from great effort.

 

Kieren fought the instinct to cringe. “Clean breaks are best.” His tone was mild, trying to suss out what Simon was playing at. They both knew their situation was temporary and hell, Simon was the one leaving.

 

“I’m sorry.” Something hard came into Simon’s tone and his face looked as if it had frozen over. “‘Not important to each other?’ How fucking dare you!”

 

“Simon, I—”

 

“No, shut up! I am your fucking lifeblood, Kieren Walker, you would miserable out here without me! You were a complete bottom-dweller until I came along and pulled you out of your self-pitying misery! Every day, you sat out here, doing nothing, moving around rocks and cleaning the walls or whatever else you do, at a complete fucking standstill in your own life! And you were convinced you were happy. You still are. That’s the worst fucking part--your delusions. You lied to yourself when you came here, you lie to yourself every single day. You think I don’t see it in your face? I do! Though I suppose that shouldn’t be a surprise to me anymore, it’s almost constant. God,” Simon’s hands clenched Kieren’s shoulders, grounding him to the spot. “That’s who you are, and I didn’t matter to you.”

 

“Simon, it was just a season. We just slept together, I don’t know why you’re so—”

 

Simon’s face flashed. “Do not say ‘clingy’ to me, Walker. Do not act like this was one-sided. God, I don’t know why I fucking care, when you just deny me every time…”

 

He trailed off, letting his hands drop from Kieren and ball at his sides. Then, as if gaining steam again, his knuckles clenched and turned stark white, made an angry pale in the morning sun filtering in.

 

“You know what, fuck you, Kieren Walker! Fuck you for the way you always run away and for your closed off face and your cold shoulder. It’s like you’re here and then gone the second that I open my mouth around you. So tell me, Kieren, what’s worse, in your opinion? Which is a greater show of human cruelty? When someone pretends they didn’t cry on your shoulder or when they don’t even plan to say goodbye? You see for me it's the second. I didn’t know I was worth the same as _dirt_ to you!”

 

“You’re one to talk!” Kieren screamed back, something coming loose inside him. “With your savior complex, and your babying of me--like I’m hopelessly lost in the world, gone crazy, need some righting. Good thing I’ve got Simon Monroe to correct me from my hopeless wandering in the world. Big strong man will save the day, right? What a hero.”

 

Simon scoffed. “Yeah, I guess it was a misplaced effort. Apparently we’re supposed to mean jack shit to each other.”

 

Kieren gave a curt retort, “It was temporary.”

 

“It was cruel.”

 

Kieren took a deep breath, uncomfortable. His skin felt cold and he futilely wished for his shoes so he could leave, walk away from this situation if only it wouldn’t prove Simon right. But they were somewhere out on the floor of Simon’s living room.

 

Simon glared at Kieren, silent as if weighing his options. Whatever he said next would either send Kieren away or tell him to stay, at least for a little longer. Deep within him, he knew it was cruel, heartless, but he thought the fight was a good thing—a permanent end. A breath of fresh air. If they ended it, for good this time, then neither of them would fall back to the other and Kieren wouldn’t have any lingering thoughts during the Simon-less months to come. Nothing like a mutual wound to wedge a gap, sore and bloody, between them.

 

For a fleeting moment, Kieren wanted to change everything that was going to happen next; if he could get Simon to stay, seduce him into Warsaw’s freezing grip, turn him into one of them, he would never have to say goodbye. He would turn him into one of the people who didn’t melt away, disappearing without a trace when spring came.

 

But wouldn’t that be crueler? Kieren knew in his selfish heart it was. To inflict Warsaw upon someone in its full horror, all the adornments stripped off the one-season advertisement version?

 

Kieren had made his mind up a long time ago, before this relapse. They couldn’t continue and he couldn’t bear to string it out. So when Simon left, Kieren would be back at the lighthouse, slapping up a new coat of paint instead of giving him a handshake goodbye.

 

“Goddamit, Kieren,” Simon’s tone sounded rough and not a little angry. He clearly wasn’t done fighting. “Why are you on your own level? Why are you off acting in the clouds of some other reality you’ve made? I’m down here and you’re up there! I do one thing and in your alternate universe it means something different and then I’m lost to you. You act based off your own extrapolations and I’m left here sitting on my hands, wondering how the fuck we got here. Everything works well in your head, I get that, but here? You’re incomprehensible, Kieren. You don’t make any sense!”

 

Kieren’s mouth tightened at Simon’s nerve. He thought he had infinite right to criticize Kieren. It was as if he was some saint that had deigned to enter Kieren’s life and tell him everything wrong with it. Kieren would honestly be better off without him. “ _I_ don’t make sense? You’re the one who took some kind of weird interest in my life and hasn’t left me alone since! Don’t call it fucking love or lust or some shit, I know you’re not as pure as all that, Simon. I have no clue why you stick around me like a puppy dog, maybe it’s boredom, maybe it’s a weird obsession with me!”

 

“Oh, fuck you, Kieren Walker. Not love? You’re going to make my fucking ears bleed with all these lies.” He had reattached himself to Kieren; he was now clutching to Kieren like a desperate man, almost tearing the shirt from his shoulders. “How can you not feel it--this--how can you deny it? When you would come and then be silent, silent for so long I thought you had fallen asleep, but then you would speak? Your voice would break the silence and sound so raw that I would be hooked in again, on you. I could always tell it was half a call to the darkness, to no one, but I would always listen.

 

“But you deny it. How can you deny it when you twitched and shivered in my arms, crying, and I’d wipe your tears away every night? Even when you’d sob the name of someone else? Isn’t that love enough? Isn’t that more than anyone ever gets in this godforsaken town? If it’s not as much as your love was for Amelia—” Kieren’s eyes flashed angry at her mention, “then we deserve some forgiveness given the circumstances. Warsaw love is not an equivalent love.”

 

It was as if his heart was being pulled in every direction, dismembered back into four chambers, each popping to a corner of the earth, finally released from their cage in Kieren’s body. Some days that’s all he felt like--a trap that people got caught in. Somehow he was responsible for this mess with Simon. Once was chance, two was a pattern.

 

Kieren moaned, pushing Simon’s hands off his shoulders. His skin burned where his fingers had been hot and tight, gripping his biceps. He looked away from the painful expression that met him. “Simon, Simon, why do you say this when you leave? Why do you want to make it harder?” The words fell from his lips, his last, final accusation.

 

Simon fell back from him, nearly to the floor. Kieren wondered whether he would have helped him up, but he already knew the answer.

 

“Leave?” He sounded confused. Kieren thought he must be mocking him. “What--when was I leaving?”

 

“It’s spring, Simon. I’m not oblivious to the outside world, despite what you might think. I know the patterns of this place like I know the water outside my own cabin.”

 

Simon looked at Kieren like he was crazy. “Is this another invention? Another fiction you’ve forced onto my character in your head, a lie without any truth? That I’m a deserter, a drifter who would leave Warsaw behind for another town?”

 

“It’s what they do.”

 

“Do? Who? Spit it out Kieren, this--whatever you’ve got cooking up there in your head. Let me know, finally, how little faith, how little desire you had for us.”

 

Kieren shook his head. This was all turning out wrong, not how it was supposed to; Simon was supposed to be leaving, not talking. The one thing Kieren had tried so hard to avoid was now happening.

 

“This wasn’t supposed to be long-term.”

 

Simon’s face turned a darker shade of red. “Why not? Why couldn’t this have been something real, Kieren, something good? It was only you cutting it short, stunting its growth before you could fall for me, too.”

 

A gasp of exhaustion rose in Kieren’s chest. He felt defeated, even though this wasn’t over yet. Defeated by Simon, the man who had pushed his way into Kieren’s life, made him care about him, and then left again. Only to return a couple weeks later. Constantly hooking him just enough to make it hurt. All the while planning to just dump Kieren like a bad memory. All his defensive talk was bullshit, straight lies. Kieren didn’t know why he was doing this--why he was doing anything. Why was he on trial when Simon was the one deserting him?

 

“Because YOU are leaving! It’s what’s _done_ , you get come in with the tide of winter and then out again in spring, taking the earliest escape from this hell on earth anyone could. So FUCK YOU, Simon Monroe, for your desertion and your pretend innocence to top it all off! Warsaw will be just fine without you.”

 

Simon, admittedly, looked shocked. It must be an unexpected twist for him that Kieren--sad, self-absorbed Kieren--had picked up on his plan. Like he could just slide out of his life unnoticed, unremarked. Well, fuck him.

 

Now Simon was pacing, tracing around the edge of the bed in the narrow room. His hips bumped against the bedframe and the walls as he moved. His hands were in his hair like he was trying to yank it out, as if, once he were bald, they would both have said every single word in their bodies and the truth would be lying there on the floor. Between them, unmoving. They would both stare at it and each other, and then try to reconcile the two.

 

“Jesus Christ, Kieren, you’re so...that doesn’t make any...I can’t...” He was rubbing his eyes frantically, as if trying to get something out of them.

 

A moment passed and then, “No, fuck YOU, Kieren. This is _your fault_. You broke us up; you’ve never given us a full chance. You and your head are the ones messing up, not me. Do you hear me? NOT ME.” Simon screamed the last part. “You’ve really got a nice talent there, Kieren, warping whatever people say and do without any evidence. I’m impressed.”

 

A long pause went by as Kieren took in what he was saying. Then, finally, “You’re...not leaving?”

 

At first: “ _Fuck_ you, Kieren.”

 

And then: “No, I’m not.”

 

Elation poured through Kieren’s chest, smoothing out the creases in his forehead, taking the hard edge from his voice. Things could be different, they could keep—

 

“God, you're the worst for me, Kier. You just,” Simon leaned on the bedpost for support, gripping the bedsheets so hard he nearly pulled them straight off by clenching his fist.

 

“But, Simon, this is good; you’re staying and I’m not going anywhere—”

 

“And that’s the problem.” Simon’s voice cut harsh across Kieren’s. “Look, you’re not changing Kieren. I’ve known you for several months now and guess what? You haven’t changed one bit, haven’t begun to touch all that shit you’ve got locked up in your head that’s fucking you up. And I can’t do it for you, I can’t be your therapist and your lover. It’s an impossible task. But. But, Kieren, you never tell me _anything_ about yourself. I don’t know what you do other than keeping the lighthouse, I don’t know anything that’s not tangential to Warsaw, this shithole. And I deserve to. I deserve a good relationship, one where my partner won’t be afraid to stay the night, one where I won’t be afraid that with every word, he’s going to run off and go further than I can ever reach. Because you scare me sometimes, Kieren--you have roots plunged deep into the earth of this town, far deeper than I’ve seen anyone go anywhere. You think you’re disconnected, that you’re more temporary or more removable than those other guys who sulk around the pub, but I know that’s not true. It’s just another lie. And it’s not normal, it's not sustainable. You’re going to break one day and wonder why the hell it happened. Well, I’m telling you. You don’t move forward; you’re planted in place.

 

“But that’s not up to me--that’s up to you. However you want to process your grief or regret is your business. But I gotta know _something_ , Kier, I deserve some kind of truth if we were going to move forward. You don’t get a monopoly on knowing the other person. You gotta talk to me. That’s all I would ask.”

 

Kieren had reached out for support on the bed frame at some point, too. “‘Would’?”

 

Simon slowly unclenched the bedsheets, drew himself up, and smoothed his hands on his jeans. “Yeah, Kieren,” his tone was soft now, had lost its hard edge. “I don’t think I could do this all again. It’s exhausting, to tell you the truth, one-way emotional labor is a real bitch. And I don’t get the sense that you’re suddenly ready and willing to change, so…”

 

He trailed off, looking Kieren up and down, as if missing him already, almost as if he regretted what he was about to say. Finally, achingly, he said, “I think you’d better leave.”

 

The cliched breakup line hit Kieren like a slap, unexpected in the quiet aftermath of Simon’s speech. He opened his mouth, about to defend himself, about to argue that he would change, he could talk, but then he closed it. He thought about all he would have to say. He would have to say Amelia’s name out loud to another person, look them in the eyes, and see their reaction. The thought was unbearable, almost unimaginable. Simon was right about him.

 

Feeling defeated, he just gave a quiet nod. Simon sighed deep and leaned back against the wall, eyes flicking downward in obvious disappointment. Kieren knew they were both regretting this, hoping the other would cave, rescind, but they had both already resigned themselves to speculation: if only in another life.

 

“Simon, I,” he said but paused when Simon closed his eyes shut. This would have been the part where Kieren said he loved him, but he didn’t. So he couldn’t.

 

Nodding curtly to himself, Kieren stooped to collect the rest of his belongings. He found his shoes out by the door and shoved his feet into them. At the door, he cast a last look back at Simon and held his glance, making his chest tighten and his stomach churn. After a moment, Simon looked away, and he left, letting the door fall behind him as he left.

 

Outside, he started nodding. It was like an addiction, the fastest ever contracted, and he couldn’t stop doing it. It was reassuring, it told himself he was accepting this, that he was moving forward. Kieren had been kicked out by tons of guys in his time; this was just another one. Run of the mill, he was a pro at this.

 

So he kept jerking his head up and down. It was as if he were already answering someone’s concerned, “Are you okay?”

 

He nodded his way all the way back to the path leading up to the lighthouse. He couldn’t make it up the drive--his vision blurred and he raised his hand to his cheek. To his shock, he found it wet. He hadn’t realized he’d been crying, but suddenly, now that he did, it was as if he couldn’t stop. The tears prevented him from seeing his way and he staggered a couple steps before sinking down in the middle of the road. Completely at the mercy of anyone who came driving down, but then again no one ever did.

 

That thought made Kieren cry more, but he had no idea why. Despair was overtaking him--he tried to fend it off, knowing it would never let him move from this spot. But it was as if his joints had already fused to the asphalt, hotly frozen to the ground.

 

If he stayed long enough, his skin would seep into the cracks in the dirt, his bones decaying among the gravel, and he would then fully belong to, or fully become, this place. Before his eyes fell shut for the last time, Kieren raised his head up and looked down the path. Up ahead, rising against the watercolor of the setting sun, was the lighthouse, tall enough to taunt him from where he lay in the most neglected spot in the world.

 

***

 

Kieren hated how predictable he was. Numerous lessons and misfortunes had no effect on him, he fell back on the same patterns once whatever new thing it was had finally, inevitably ended. But he knew this, and self-consciousness had to count for something. As long as he was going to fall back, he was going to create a new equilibrium. A new stasis, better than the last one: moving to a deserted seaside town.

 

That one had worked for a while, but then it wasn’t enough anymore. Problems emerged: the solitude, the unchanging nature. But he came up with a solution that millions of other people have been trying forever--he got a dog. Layla was wonderful and they were very happy together. She loved the coast and made Kieren see it through new eyes again, enjoying it enough that he thought to himself, this is what I was missing.

 

It wasn’t Layla’s fault when the creeping fog of depression returned to engulf him again. By the fifth time he tried a patchwork solution, Kieren had resigned himself to the fact that he couldn’t live like this and survive it. So now he threw one thing, then another, and another into his life until they didn’t work anymore and he would ditch it. Layla remained the only exception; they were together for life.

 

Right now, Kieren was on a kick where he would go to the bar most nights. But that had proved to be more than harmless fun, and he had to quit it now unless he wanted to see Simon there. Luckily he had a plan: you don’t need to go to a bar if you’re already drunk off your own six pack.

 

Simon had been different, Kieren knew it in his gut, despite his denials. He wished he didn’t, he wished he could deny him and write him off as another fad, another something he just filled his time with. Two weeks ago, three even, he would have done just that. But now he couldn’t quite find it in him to add Simon to his calendar of trends. Somehow, still, even after their fight, Kieren couldn’t equivalate him to scooping the rocks out of the cave or repainting the lighthouse.

 

So he was a man of patterns, and true to form, Kieren had now taken up residence in the town bar once again on an indefinite stay. He was scraped off the bar every night--late--and dumped out in the street, where he would pathetically crawl around back and collapse into a drunken sleep by the dumpster. When he woke up the next morning he would drag himself up, stumble in through the doors, and drape himself over another pint. And there he would remain, staring at the grain in the wood, until closing again.

 

There was the issue of Simon. Or rather, the non-issue: he hadn’t returned to the bar. Kieren was surprised by this, fully expecting to have to endure his sneaky glances every night, but he hadn’t turned up. It made Kieren feel like he had won something--sole custody of the bar.

 

Some nights Rita would make him go home and feed Layla. He felt guilty about these--Layla was his responsibility alone. Yet he knew that on the days he would fall asleep slumped against the brick outside of bar that Rita went and took care of her, even at two o’clock in the morning. The guilt punched through his chest, but he managed to get himself home to be with her some nights when it got too bad. Those were the nights he would sit with her until dawn, not sleeping, just listening to the rise and fall of her chest to know that she was there. That they were both still there. She was always happy to see him and didn’t even mind if, after several nights apart, Kieren hugged her for long minutes before she got her food. She was everything he needed and coming home to her felt like a new equilibrium. His life in Warsaw had managed to shift, glacially slow, just an inch for the better, despite his best efforts to keep it locked in place.

 

Sometimes the landscape reached out and changed you.

 

One night, Kieren sat in the bar, passing time as the condensation built up under his slippery hand. When one of the gruff, solitary men who usually sat a couple of stools over moved his beer down and sank into the seat next to Kieren, he wasn’t sure what was happening.

 

He never talked to anyone else in the bar much, other than a few perfunctory questions mostly initiated on their part and some probing questions from Rita. Mostly, everyone left everyone else alone. Loneliness was the standard of living up here.

 

The guy nodded at Kieren, “Hey.”

 

He looked back blankly. “Hey.”

 

“Beer’s good tonight, huh?” The guy took another swig of his. He had a thick, working-class accent that made him seem warm and casual.

 

Kieren stared at the last few drops of his with dejection. “Yeah, it is.”

 

“What is it you do, man? Never see you in town.”

 

Kieren told him. The guy nodded. Kieren could tell he wasn’t impressed. Maybe he was recalling the chipped and peeling state of the lighthouse it was currently in.

 

“What do you do?” It seemed polite to ask in turn.

 

The guy seemed happy to answer. “I work in the mines a couple miles outside town. Me and lots of the other guys around here get bussed out every day. The job stinks, to be honest, but you take what you can get around here.”

 

He certainly looked like the product of a working lifestyle: big hulking muscles that screamed of manual labor but not a lick of fat anywhere on his body. Next to him, Kieren felt like a string bean. He could certainly throw Kieren around if he wanted to.

 

“Ah,” he said, acknowledging.

 

“Yeah, those guys are great, though. Don’t like drinking much, only, which is a bit of a surprise to anyone who doesn’t know them. Great blokes to share a laugh with though.”

 

Kieren started. What this guy was describing were...friends. And if not friends, then friendly coworkers. People in a community together, joined by more than just the geographical borders, willing to form relationships with each other. The whole idea was so at odds with Kieren’s conception of this place that all he could do was stare at the guy.

 

“Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, tough to stay friends instead of coworkers. But every once in awhile we go ‘round each other’s houses, have family potlucks, that sort of thing. So I still get to spend some good time with them outside of the mines. Then I come and drink with these blokes.” He gestured behind him to the other barflys whose faces all looked familiar to Kieren, being a regular himself. He felt caught on the wrong foot; a whole symbiosis of these people was opening up to his eyes that he had had no idea of. They all went together, talking and laughing every night, but he hadn’t seen it this whole time. He assumed everyone had been just like him: alone.

 

Kieren must have given an acknowledging expression, because the guy continued. “Used to be a quiet guy, myself. Didn’t talk to anyone here, ignored them all, only talked to myself in the mirror at night. But it grates on you, you know? So I started talking to the other guys in the mines, made some friends, the whole deal. Much happier now, simple as that.”

 

He was a bit lost in his memories, from what Kieren saw. He wouldn’t be surprised if the guy forgot about him soon. That was fine by him; he just signaled Rita for two more and settled in to listen.

 

“Loneliness is the worst up here; lotsa folks say it’ll be the elements, the cold winter, but no, I know it's the lack of company that’ll really get you on those cold, bleak days. I learned that real quick, then got to making myself some friends.”

 

Kieren leaned his chin against his hand. “But wasn’t there a reason you kept to yourself?”

 

“Oh, sure,” the guy took a swig of his beer. “Everyone here’s got something they think’s important enough to end the earth with. After a time, though, I figured out it wasn’t, and I let it go. Now I’m just up here ‘cause I’ve settled. Got me a wife and everything.”

 

“A wife?” Kieren failed to hide his surprise. Finding a family here was the last thing he thought could ever happen to anyone.

 

“Yeah. She’s the light of my life. Met her up at the grocery, she works in accounts there. I used to think I wasn’t the type to get married, but…”

 

“Why not?” Kieren asked, clutching his pint.

 

“Never lucky in love, I guess. Coupla bad breakups will make you swear off for a while, right? It's common enough.” Kieren looked anywhere but the guy’s face, with its stark, painful honesty.

 

“But she...she’s great. You just realize after a time, that you just want to be held, yeah? For all your tough talk with the lads, everyone wants to let someone in, to just be able talk to someone at the end of the day. Marrying her felt like relaxing. I let go of something real bad that was holding me back.”

 

“Oh,” Kieren said softly, despite himself. “But what about...your breakups?”

 

“What about ‘em? I found the love of my life and I was ready to spend every tender moment with her. Best parts of my day, now. Don’t know what was holding me back from it before. Intimacy, man. Don’t tell those guys over there,” he said in jest, enough that Kieren knew he wasn’t really embarrassed. “But nothing’s better than being close to someone, letting them see the vulnerable side of you.”

 

Kieren stared at him with wide eyes. The guy took his disbelief for shock and chuckled to himself. “I’m sorry, man. I know I’m very open about this stuff.”

 

“No, it’s…” Kieren trailed off, couldn’t find the words. He had the sneaking sensation that something had shifted inside him, just a millimeter.

 

The guy chuckled again, smoothing over the awkward moment. It was impressive how confident he was, even when baring his soul to a stranger.

 

“But what about you, man, got any family? You’re still young yet, though, I suppose the pressure’s not on.”

 

Kieren shrugged. “Ah, well, at thirty-five I think most people’s wedding years are already over, actually. That ship has probably sailed.”

 

The guy, to Kieren’s surprise, clapped him on the back in support. “Don’t worry about it! There’s plenty of pretty girls your age, believe me.”

 

Kieren nodded. “I know.” _Amelia._ Hopefully off with a new husband and 2.5 kids. Hopefully able to talk to the new thirty-five-year-old that took his place and say more than just “good morning” and “goodnight.” A life with real intimacy, not just unpleasant sex that neither of them wanted.

 

Kieren squeezed his eyes shut and took another big gulp of his beer. The guy gave a laugh at his despair and clapped him on the back once more. “She’ll find you, man. She’ll come and grab you, and then you won’t be able to let go! That’s love. That’s what’s real.” And with that he pushed back from the bar, threw a couple of bills down and left the bar as quickly as he’d come, door swinging behind him.

 

Kieren wasn’t entirely sure that he hadn’t been an illusion, a prophet of some kind to try and dissuade him from his solitary journey. Slowly, he shook his head and resumed staring into his beer, trying to return to his thoughts before the guy--he didn’t even know his name--had approached him.

 

After a while, he conceded that he wasn’t enjoying it anymore, cast some bills next to his unfinished drink, and left, reasonably sober for the first time in weeks. The first time since he and Simon had split.

 

He wandered the dark and lonely streets that crisscrossed town in no orderly fashion. The air was crisp and had a bite to it, fall weather anywhere else. It was August, though, and they were far, far up north. Kieren’s light jacket felt nice and freeing as he walked among the lamplight casting a warm glow on the streets.

 

He walked and walked, passing the same haunts again and again, trying not to let the tears well up and fall. The last time he had seen Simon had been weeks ago, as he was leaving the grocery store Kieren was entering. He had held the door for him, but didn’t look at Kieren’s face. Kieren couldn’t blame him.

 

Since then, he hadn’t seen a glimpse of him, not even mistaking someone else for him. His whole life felt gutted, devoid of something that had filled it before, even though they hadn’t ever been together. Not officially. Not even implicitly, Kieren would argue, although Simon seemed to think so.

 

Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling of missing something. Before, he had stuck to the bottle the whole time he had been processing Simon’s absence and never had one of these grim, sober moments. His steps led him to the grocery and he stood staring at the sign, letters blurred out from the tears in his eyes.

 

He felt dirty, disgusting standing there in unwashed clothes with his breath stinking of booze and a lazy man’s scruff growing over his chin. It was as if he had arrived at church in disgrace, not fit to sit with the rest of the congregation.

 

Shame overtook him and that made the tears come faster, hot and pouring down his face to his further shame. A part of his mind was paranoid that someone would come around the corner, Rita, maybe, walking back after locking up, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn and check. He didn’t know what to do, standing there, remembering Simon as though he was already as distant as Amelia was. Something in his stomach sank at the thought of equating them, of setting a pattern to Kieren’s consequences in love.

 

It wasn’t fair to say he loved her, not at the end. But it wasn’t fair to say Simon was his first true love.

 

An overwhelming sense of entrapment closed in over Kieren, egged on by his miserable thoughts and the unbreakable patterns in his life. Leaving Amelia, hurting Simon. Something had to give; he couldn’t keep doing this. He had cursed himself, jinxed his life, and now he was destined to live the same way forever. The thought of Warsaw as a permanent home made Kieren shudder in the cool night air. He had been living here for several years and couldn’t bear the thought of several more.

 

The air felt so static, so oppressive that Kieren felt he had to move. Gradually, he pulled himself home, along the gravel path that wound steadily towards his cabin, passing the dark figures of the trees on either side. Eventually, the lights of the town faded to bulbs of yellow light dotting the distance.

 

Out here, he could breathe.

 

But out here, he was alone with the lighthouse, it's incomplete paint job visible despite the darkness and with the stoned-up cave that sat across the bay in judgement of him. Everything was a mark, a memory of his failures. Everything he had failed to correct about himself even after years spent at the job. The weight grew and grew until it was too much for him to bear, they all glared at him in the darkness, accusing. Each demanding to know, why hadn’t they been finished? Why had he failed again?

 

He fell to his knees, more out of exhaustion than emotion, hitting rocks against his shins. _Something has to change_ , he thought. He had sworn to be better, to do better by others in the future. That time was now, here. But he was slipping again, pushing Simon away because of the very reasons he should be letting him in: Amelia. The fallout, years later, was still holding him back. Even when he swore to never repeat the self-destructive behavior he had when he was with her.

 

She had told him to do better, their last night together. It wasn’t so much a falling apart of their marriage so much as it was the breaking point at which things couldn’t be held together any longer. She told him, “Kieren, you’re not a cruel person; treat the next one better.”

 

By this point, Kieren had run out of tears to cry. He just leaned back against the side of his cabin and breathed deep, chest heaving as if crushed off the weight of her command. Slowly, he closed his eyes and waited for the sun to rise, to start a day unlike all the others before it.

 

***

 

Kieren woke to Amelia standing over his bed. An icy chill ran through him--she couldn’t be here, it wasn’t possible. If she had tracked him down, found him somehow...that was his worst fear. To still be within the grip of the outside world even all the way in Warsaw would be the opposite of isolation.

 

Looking at her answered one question, though: if Amelia came to him today, tomorrow, could he look her in the face? Would his guilt be too great to stare into her sweet, innocent eyes, or would hide his face from her in shame? He sat there frozen in bed, accomplishing something small just by looking her in the eye. Maybe she would see newfound honesty in his face and forgive him.

 

Her face, unlike Kieren’s, wasn’t frozen at all but alive, pulsing and twisting with emotion that contorted her face. Anger, hatred, fear all mixed themselves up in her eyes that burned with the passion of a long-held grudge. Kieren’s heart cowered in his chest.

 

He managed to force his lips into words. “Amelia,” he said, that almost-constant refrain in his head finally voiced to its owner.

 

Her face grew more angry at his voice. “Kieren Walker,” she spat out the name and Kieren felt her hatred like a slap to the face. “You ruined me.”

 

He protested. “No, I—”

 

“You let me waste away to nothing! I was nothing but a living ghost when you were done with me!”

 

“Amelia, I—”

 

She suddenly tilted her head back and let out a shriek, too eerie and high-pitched for any living creature to make. Kieren looked her over again, taking note of her clothes for the first time with alarm. She wore a white nightgown almost as pale as her pale skin, and her feet, where they stood on the floorboards, were unbelievably translucent.

 

Her scream halted abruptly; she cut it off. “DO YOU DENY IT?” Her voice was so loud it hurt Kieren’s ears. He felt as if the words were reverberating in his head even after she stopped speaking them, echoing in a taunting chorus.

 

Kieren spoke quietly, humbled. “No, I don’t.”

 

She screamed again, long and drawing out each word. “GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!” Repeating it, she rose into the air, feet departing the floor as if a ghost and dived for Kieren. Her face, contorted by rage, held for a moment an inch from Kieren’s face, spitting and screaming, and then dissipated as quickly as she had appeared.

 

Shaking, Kieren sat bolt upright in bed, awake for real this time. He was sweating, the sheets under him soaked through, and breathing as if he had run a marathon. The adrenaline ran quick through his veins. Amelia’s voice echoed in his ear relentlessly as he sat awake and sleepless for the rest of the night, unable to shake the feeling that some ghostly remnant remained in the dark room.

 

The new day began with Layla curled up next to him in bed. Kieren laid in bed as he watched the sun grow gradually brighter behind the curtains, letting her calmness ground him in the coming morning, making the sunlight feel not so violent. He knew exactly what today would be like.

 

Morning passed briskly as Kieren did a couple chores around the lighthouse, just to keep it in working shape. It had fallen a little to the wayside in the past few months, and he had to do some tinkering with the broken beacon soon. Not that any ships came into port, but he felt good about keeping it working. He wanted everything in order before today.

 

Around midmorning he donned his jacket, let Layla outside to run around, and set off down the path into the village, feeling firm in every step. His confident exterior was belied by his stomach, churning like he was seasick, and his sweating palms. Quelling his nervous thoughts, he tried to focus on making himself calm.

 

Too soon, he arrived at the sagging craftsman house he knew all too well. Knocked, waited, then the door swung open to reveal Simon, dressed for the day.

 

“Hello,” Kieren said. He didn’t know how else to start and hoped, ridiculously, that it would be enough. That Simon would nod, kiss him, and pull him inside the house, no words necessary.

 

But he just raised his eyebrows. After a moment of not budging from the door and Kieren remaining silent, he relented and let Kieren inside the house. Even that, Kieren knew he didn’t deserve. Simon gave him chance after chance when he should have learned long ago that Kieren was the exact kind of person who would abuse that. The safe option would have been to swing the door shut in Kieren’s begging face.

 

Because that is what he had come here to do, essentially. To beg for Simon’s forgiveness. If he rebuked him, Kieren wouldn’t blame him; part of him believed it was unfair to even ask this of him.

 

Simon sat them down in a spartan living room, one decorated to make Kieren think that sans plans to leave Warsaw, Simon certainly didn’t bet on staying long. The place wasn’t a home.

 

“You look nice,” Kieren said in a soft tone, even though he knew it would come across as a pathetic plea.

 

Simon just stared at him. Kieren could tell he was quickly losing patience; it was time for Kieren to say his bit.

 

“A couple of years ago,” Kieren started, then stopped. He took a deep breath, psyching himself up, reminding himself that he had to do this. It was the least he owed Simon. “Years ago, I ruined someone’s life. Irreparably. She wasted all her good years with me and I tossed them down the gutter as if they meant nothing. I was young and selfish, and I thought it wouldn’t matter.”

 

Simon’s eyes widened, but stayed silent, waiting for Kieren to continue.

 

“Amelia,” Kieren tried not to choke on it, let it trip him up as it always did. “That was her name. But our marriage wasn’t a blessing, it was a curse, for both of us. For her especially. She was nothing but good, and I used that for my own needs. It was like...she wasn’t a person to me, but a means to an end.

 

“But, the beginning--before it all went to shit. We met, she was beautiful, I fell in love, real, genuine love, like I’ve never felt, and she did too. Back then, though, things were great. I really did love her, I really cared for her, how could I not? She was charming, a social butterfly who’d landed on my shoulder. Lucky me that she called me back after the first date. God knows there were plenty of people that didn’t get that call.

 

“So we went on dates, moved in together, did the whole boyfriend and girlfriend thing. But I think even then, she knew what was happening inside me. You have to understand, Simon,” Kieren grabbed his knee here. It was absolutely imperative he understand this part. “I already knew I was bisexual at this point. That wasn’t the issue; that wasn’t what destroyed our relationship.”

 

Simon nodded, eyes still wide. Kieren wondered if he was embarrassing him with this; after all, he had come uninvited. But Simon didn’t look angry anymore, so Kieren decided to keep going.

 

“So what was the issue?” Simon asked.

 

Kieren gave a wan smile. “That came over time. We were serious, is the point. We were both committed to each other. We got married four years after we met, it was beautiful, we had so many friends come and wish us well. We were that couple, the one that’s loved by everyone they know.

 

“Marriage didn’t change much, honestly; we already lived together, we had known we were committed to each other for a while. So we were happy, for the first year and a bit. But, something inside me was upset. Problems that hadn’t been significant as boyfriend and girlfriend didn’t just suddenly go away, in fact, they were amplified. Little things we had overlooked became important. Fights that weren’t worth having suddenly were, and they grew out of issues we had that had been festering underneath the surface for years.

 

“But the biggest one, the one that finally did us in, worked its way slowly into our lives, creeping in after our honeymoon was long over and cracking us slowly apart for the next four years. It was me, it was my fundamental choices that got in the way of our happiness. And it still does.” Kieren put his face in his hands, knowing Simon would recognize the similar situation instantly the moment Kieren described it. He was so ashamed he couldn’t look at him.

 

“What,” Simon said softly, a reaction more than a question. Distantly, Kieren was shocked that Simon cared enough to keep listening and even to ask for more. Part of him had expected to be thrown out the minute he mentioned an ex--Kieren couldn’t believe Simon cared.

 

But he should have known Simon wasn’t as predictable as that. Or maybe it was an interest in the disaster of a relationship that had come before theirs, but mirrored it so exactly.

 

“Amelia said it as if she had a fishing hook snagged onto my insides and was trying to reel it in, to pull the most internal parts of me up and out so that they could be seen in the light. Except the hook kept slipping out of place and I escaped scot free. It was as if, she accused me, I was reaching down myself and pulling it out.”

 

A flicker of recognition passed across Simon’s face.

 

“You see, she wanted to know the deepest parts of me, my hopes and fears, the whole nine yards, you know? And who could blame her, that’s what it means to be a partner to someone. You know everything about them. You open up, you talk about things that matter to you. But I was young and dumb, I was inexperienced, I thought I could float through marriage the way I had our relationship up until that point. Passively.

 

“So it was a one-way street with her the only one trying to drive the car. It wasn’t very sustainable. Oh, you’ll recognize this part; she was frequently frustrated with me and would shift from quiet and coaxing to angry when I refused to speak. Then five minutes later I’d be yaking about what we were going to make for dinner that night. I was infuriating, and I think I knew that at the time, but I couldn’t stop.

 

“From there, things couldn’t get any better. Eventually, we stopped having sex, something only middle-aged couples do. We were both twenty-six. It was two years after we got married. We should have been anticipating kids. Amelia wanted them, actually--but by the time she brought up that topic we were so distant that it was a laughable topic. I didn’t handle it maturely, either, just stared at her while she talked and then said no. The whole thing scared me, not just the responsibility of a kid but the deepening of our relationship. A child would bind us together forever, even if we separated. And by that time, we were pretty separate in all but house.

 

“We relaxed out of love, falling out of it much slower than we fell into. But that’s kids for you. We didn’t love each other by the end, and I handled it badly. I let it drag on for years after I woke up that one day and realized it was finally, finally over, that I didn’t love her anymore. I think at that point she still had some lingering hope for me--she never gave up, that girl--but that faded pretty fast.

 

“The last three years were pretty miserable. Sporadic fights, separate lives, lots of silence. She left me once she was finally sure I was a lost cause.”

 

Simon started. “ _She_ left _you_?”

 

Kieren smiled grimly. “But isn’t that what’s just? It was her relationship, she was doing all the work, everything right. If I had driven it, it would’ve been even more of a trainwreck. I suppose that’s why it lasted as long as it did--I wasn’t in charge of making it work. That was my thought process at the time, at any rate, so you can see how much it did to hold us together. When one person’s checked out for good, do you have any chance?

 

“I only held on because that marriage was the only thing giving my life structure at that point. I had a job, but it was shitty, minimum wage stuff, and barely any friends left in town, they had all moved away to big cities. Amelia and I were the homebodies who never moved out of the town we were born in. Amelia was solid, stable, and had been there my whole adult life. I didn’t know how to leave her.”

 

“But she did,” Simon supplied when Kieren, overcome with guilt, paused to swallow hard.

 

“Yeah. One day she got up and came into the kitchen and told me that she couldn’t do it anymore, that she was leaving. And so she did.” Kieren sighed.

 

Simon stared at him with sad eyes. “I’m sorry, Kier.”

 

There was a pause before he asked, “But, if you don’t mind me asking--and I don’t mean this—”

 

“Why did all this make me come to Warsaw? Bit of an overreaction, don’t you think? People’s wives leave them all the time, but I had the gall to spiral after my already-loveless marriage disintegrated?”

 

“Well, yeah,” Simon looked, rather than cowed, confident. Kieren didn’t mind--if he was going to ask probing questions the least he could do was own them.

 

And he was far from offended by this particular question. God knows, he’d had enough time to ponder it up here.

 

“It was something she said to me the day she left. She had her coat and bag and was halfway out the door when she turned and said to me, ‘Kieren Walker, you ruined my life. You sucked the youth straight out of me and kept it for yourself. You’re so fucking selfish.’ And she was right.”

 

“Can’t say it’s an unfamiliar feeling, Kier.”

 

Kieren grimaced. “I know. This whole time up here, I was so focused on being better, improving myself so that would never happen again that I repeated every single mistake over again. It kept me back all these years up here, the unforgivable guilt. I was trying so hard to work it out of my system, to work out whatever poison I had injected into our relationship, but I just duplicated it with us. My history is doomed to repeat and all that. I’m sorry, Simon. You don’t deserve that.”

 

Simon made a humming noise. They sat for a minute, in the wake of that, looking at each other, trying to read the other’s thoughts.

 

When he spoke, Simon talked in a quiet tone. “Do you think you could ever get over her?”

 

Kieren stared at him. “Simon...”

 

Simon gave a short laugh, not friendly. “Of course, you pause. You always hesitate. Would you ever give me a straight answer to any meaningful question if I asked?”

 

Kieren shook his head, denying Simon’s accusation.

 

Ignoring him, Simon leaned forward in his chair. Something in his eyes danced cold and dissonant with the sunlight filling the room. “Do you love me?”

 

“Simon,” Kieren said and stopped.

 

Simon gave a short, barking laugh. It felt cold and made Kieren realize that this wasn’t going to end the way he wanted to--Simon wasn’t going to just fall into his arms now that he had confessed. The very idea felt, for lack of a better word, childish. Kieren had opened up, he had grown, he’d showed he’d changed since Amelia. Proof of improvement. No more repeating the same mistakes with Simon, that was his implicit promise. Why was he being rebuked?

 

“Typical Kieren. You’ve brainwashed yourself into thinking you’ve changed, but you’re no better than before. You’ve just learned to con me into believing you for a hot second. And I’m not going for it.”

 

Suddenly, Simon pushed up from his chair and crossed the room to look out the window for a moment, more to hide his face, Kieren could tell, than to indulge an actual desire to look out the window. The whole room lay between them now, stretching out infinitely.

 

“Do you not think you affected me?”

 

“What?” Kieren said. Simon turned away from the window, letting the sun filter in from behind him, haloing his body in warm light. Kieren thought he looked like an ancient Greek god.

 

“You say you ruined Amelia’s life, and I assume that’s why you’re here. The greatest overreaction in modern history.”

 

Kieren felt the sting of that comment hit him like a whip. “Simon, I was so--I was so consumed with, with the guilt, I couldn’t—”

 

“Oh, you _couldn’t_. You had to escape yourself, is that right? You were running from yourself, you wanted to redeem yourself so you punished yourself up here for years and it's a whole tragic story. The whole idea is that you’ll change yourself up here, right? That somehow, in this vacuum of a town, you’ll magically change your whole personality.”

 

Kieren’s fingernails dug into his palms from where he held them in his lap. He focused on the pain and tried not to let Simon’s words stick in his head.

 

“So my question is, then, why aren’t you broken up over me? You hurt me, Kieren, you used me and you cared about me, I know, but you refused to let me in close. Being held at arm’s length for months took a toll on me, but you’re not moving to another remote village for me. You’re not in pieces over me, but I know that _you were in love with me_.” He dragged the last part out, hissing it across the room so that when it reached Kieren, he cringed from the venom infused in it.

 

“Want to know how I know,” Simon’s tone turned fake-light again, his posture fake-casual to match, leaning back against the windowsill. “I know you loved me because you’d say my name. Not during sex--no, that would be intolerable for you, I suppose. A violation of your Great Mission. But while you were asleep, finally, after lying awake for hours after sex, I would wake up and hear you whispering ‘Simon’ from where you were curled against me. What do you have to say about that?”

 

Kieren shook his head.

 

Simon continued, “And then the next day you’d wake up and leave me while I was sleeping. What a personality change.”

 

A pause where neither of them said anything. Simon glared at Kieren, who couldn’t meet his eyes.

 

“You want to know how I know I’m in love with you? Because I wake up in a sweat sometimes, worrying about you. And then I get my coat on, even back when it was February, even when it was so cold out it would freeze your joints in place, and I walk down to the lighthouse. Once I get close enough to see the cabin, I stop. There was light from it, some nights, the nights you would fix the beacon, I assume. And if there was light I knew you were okay. I knew that things were business as usual. So I’d let out a sigh, stand in the light for a little longer, just staying in that moment where I knew you were okay. Then I’d turn and go home. But the nights when the light wasn’t on, it would be worse, standing there in the dark. Nothing to be done, I knew if I knocked you wouldn’t let me in. So I’d have to stay outside, my breath puffing before me, and feel that sinking feeling in my stomach because I knew that maybe you needed someone. But I wasn’t sure that was me. I wanted to be your go-to, Kieren, but I wasn’t sure you wanted me, and that’s one of the worst feelings I’ve ever had to endure. Do you have any idea how that feels? I don’t think you do, because then the next night we’d sleep together and you’d turn away right after you pulled out. So you messed with me, too. I’m not going to say it’s as bad as how you fucked up Amelia, because I don’t know. I don’t know her pain. But I know what I’ve got, and it deserves _something_ . Fucking something. I may not be your wife of nine years, but I deserve at least a _goddamn apology_.”

 

Simon breathed heavy. “And don’t say you have, all you’ve given me a bullshit ‘sorry’ tacked onto the end to the biggest ‘dog ate my homework’ ever and when it comes to you, Kieren, I know I need actions. Your words are worth nothing.”

 

Reeling, Kieren tried to collect his thoughts. “How dare you. How dare you call her an excuse. She was my life, and I ruined that, I _ruined_ her. She’s completely innocent, how dare you drag her through th—”

 

“How dare I? How dare you! You said she mattered to you, but all she really seems to mean to you is a name you can pull up as a get-out-of-jail-free card! You’re despicable, Kieren.

 

“And I’m sorry,” Simon continued, in a curt voice, not giving Kieren time to respond. “I’m sure you meant for this little meeting that you’ve penciled into your schedule to go way differently. Well, I’m so sorry that you’re not getting the fucking forgiveness you want!”

 

Kieren cringed again at the word ‘forgiveness,’ hearing it echo in his own head over and over again. His hands were sweating cold where he gripped onto the chair of Simon’s he was sitting in. Simon let out a huff of disgust at his silence.

 

“I guess I’m the fool for hoping you’d really changed. Speak up and fight back, Kieren. And not just against me but in life. You cower so much at the ends of the earth that I think you’ve forgotten you can stand up, that you have a spine.” Kieren still didn’t say anything, just looked at him with sad eyes, knowing now that he nothing he said could make Simon stay.

 

Simon gave another, final sigh and pushed off the wall, crossing the room with huge, angry strides. Grabbing his coat off the wall, wrenching the door open, he exited and let it bang shut behind him. Simon was gone. Kieren was left to sit in the cold silence of Simon’s living room, staring at the cracks in the ceiling and trying not to cry. This time, the leaving felt permanent. Kieren knew he wouldn’t find Simon in his bed next week, not even angry and sullen as he was sometimes.

 

He was gone for good and Kieren was the one who had driven him away again. What was the saying, one’s chance, two’s coincidence, and three’s a pattern? Kieren couldn’t even count the number of times Simon had left him in anger. This time, he had been sure, would break the pattern. But Kieren was really, truly friendless, mired in a loneliness of his own making.

 

After long moments in which the crown molding along the ceiling blurred in and out, Kieren managed to get himself under control. Sitting in Simon’s house without him made him feel silly and dumb. He shouldn’t have tried to do anything, he should have just left things as they were. If he ever saw Simon without a glare for him again, he’d be surprised. When he thought about the way he’d looked Kieren, almost begging him to say he loved Simon back--well, he’d almost looked sick. Suddenly, Kieren was possessed by an urge to get out of his house. No longer could he sit here, stupidly, crying and waiting for what? Simon to return? And find him sitting here as if he was sitting on his hands until he was forgiven. Sitting here until he had been quiet enough, good enough to be something worth resuming.

 

A relationship, at this point--Kieren knew that was too much to hope for. Simon was unwavering in his pattern of forgiving Kieren but something was different this time. Simon knew too much about him now--before, he could have come back to Kieren under the pretext of sex. Who else did he have to hook up with? But it wasn’t sex with a stranger anymore. Kieren hadn’t realized until now that was why he played his cards close to his chest: the stakes were higher with Simon. He had played the odds, trying to get everything without giving up anything, and lost.

 

The guilt was crushing now, thoughts whirling, telling him he should have changed this and this and this about his actions and then he could have saved something. It had been up to him to save their relationship, and he had dropped the ball spectacularly. After all, wasn’t he the one with something to prove?

 

Suddenly, Kieren wished that he could leave Warsaw. Distantly in his mind, he knew that it would look like he was running again. People were always looking at his life from the outside and getting the wrong idea. Misinterpretation--wasn’t that the root of all Kieren’s problems? But if just left, packed a truck and put the lighthouse in his rearview tonight, then everything could maybe be a little better. Another fresh slate in a place where no one in its little world knew his secrets. It was an idea.

 

Subconsciously, Kieren knew he got to his feet and slid his jacket on before heading out the door. He closed it with a soft click behind him, as if laying to rest something sleeping peacefully. He took off in the direction of his cabin. Time passed fluidly; the trip usually took a half an hour or a fifteen minute jog, but he had no idea how much time passed before he was at the cabin.

 

But he wasn’t there for good. He strode past his porch and kept marching, clomping in his boots through overgrown grass and brambles. More than once, he paused to pick bugs off his socks where they were trying to worm their way into with his warm feet.

 

Lifting his gaze from the ground, he looked up and saw it sitting there, tires sunken into the earth a little from all the seasonal shifts from mud to frozen dirt. This had definitely been its home for a while. Kieren was glad that one of them had taken to Warsaw so well.

 

When he got close enough, he grabbed the door handle of the old pickup truck. He sent up a quick prayer it would open and then, rust protesting and joints creaking, the door fell open, letting him back in, after all these years. It was just like he had left it, plus mountains of dust. Even the chip packet he had been eating on the way up here--now old, its crinkles turned into corners for beetles--was still lying on the passenger seat.

 

Kieren sighed and the truck seemed to exhale in return, giving up a wheezy cough that sent dust spiraling through the air. Resisting the urge to cough, Kieren swung himself up behind the wheel as he nabbed the keys from the passenger seat. He hadn’t driven this thing for years and hoped to God that it was still working. For all his maintenance on the lighthouse, for all his jaunts into town, he had never spared it a second glance.

 

Sitting up and looking out over the dashboard, through the windshield, past his hands resting at ten and two, he remembered the last time he had driven it. How he had practically collapsed out of it when he had parked it here, gasping as if the air inside it had been oppressive. The night he looked back at it with loathing as a memory of another life. An unavoidable relic along for the ride, like a tick on his pant leg. So he had let it sit and sit outside to gather dust as it wished.

 

It was a nice truck though, or it had been, something anyone would be envious to have. But he didn’t have time for luxuries right now. He hoped all that money had gotten him something worthwhile. Sticking the key in the ignition and firing up the car, it leapt to life with a clank and groan and Kieren punched the gearshift into place. It took some coaxing but soon enough the truck warmed up to the idea of movement. He reversed around the cabin to put himself on the road and, kicking up gravel behind him, sped away from the lighthouse which rose up eerily behind the cabin. Their shapes contrasted squat and tall, both dark against the twilight colors smeared across the sky.

 

Kieren looked away and glared at the road in front of him. All he could think of was: out. _Get me out._ It was almost as if he were pleaded with the road to take him somewhere else far away from Warsaw. It was remarkably quick to get to town as Kieren tore through the little shops and sped around corners so fast that other cars leapt out of his way. When he careened around the corner by the bar he saw Rita come running out of the place, eyes angry and fists raised, ready to give him a piece of her mind. When she saw it was him--quiet, troubled Kieren--her mouth dropped open and her eyes went wide in shock.

 

Kieren didn’t spare her a second glance. He didn’t have time; he had a new plan. His mission--now revised--was important, all consuming, all ending. This was it, his last haul; he was tired of carrying weight around like stones on his back. He was at the end of his rope and this was his last-ditch attempt to make something, just one thing, work.

 

He didn’t know where he was going. It was impossible to know where she lived after all these years or to even look her up. He had no Internet, no way of getting it, and no clue whether she was on it or not. But that didn’t matter. First he had to leave, then he would go somewhere. Warsaw wasn’t a town you emigrated from.

 

Landscapes passed him as blurred Impressionist paintings as he drove and drove. He put so much distance that before he realized it, Warsaw was long gone and it had been god knows how many hours behind the wheel. There was a deep pain in his back that coupled with the stiffness in his fingers which were fused tight to the steering wheel. But that wasn’t the worst part. Every so often, he’d involuntarily recall another memory, as if his own mind couldn’t help but hurt him, and then his vision would go fuzzy, like he was driving through thick morning fog. It was as if a flashback except it was paired with a sharp pain that shot through his chest. The pain was so great that he would cry out a name against his will, usually Amelia’s but sometimes Simon’s. That one would be whispered to the dashboard, blood in Kieren’s cheeks, which was barely visible in the haze of his vacillating sight, just a blur of brown leather.

 

He couldn’t keep going for much longer; the fog was getting thicker with each attack.

 

Slowly, ominously, a pain snaked its way up his spine, creeping its way towards Kieren’s chest. Gripping the steering wheel harder, he tried desperately to maintain his position on the road while the white hot throb threatened to make him lose focus.

 

Another wave came and washed over him, shooting right for his heart and, if he didn’t know better, peeling back its walls and entering it. Helpless, he relinquished sight of the road. The truck jerked and swayed across the other lanes as he fought off the memory, trying not to remember his worst moments with her.

 

The car dipped and Kieren’s vision blacked out, forced to relive.

 

“Kieren, sit down,” she had said, calmly, sweetly, purely happy for the first time in a long time. Kieren took that as a good sign but tentatively. He wasn’t sure what she wanted. Their relationship was already like that--both twenty-six years old and already defaulting to two sides of an argument not yet begun.

 

But they were married, so he sat. They had stopped having sex by this point, too, hadn’t touched each other in a couple months. When Amelia had tried to put her arms around Kieren in bed last night, he’d slipped out.

 

The truck went over a bump, making the body of the cab groan and jolt Kieren in his seat, but not enough to rouse him from the memory. His flesh was hot, almost boiling. Some cool air would rouse him. He groped for the window mechanism, unable to see clearly, and, finding it, pulled hard. To his disappointment, the entire door swung open instead. Angry, frustrated, he let it swing there, a dangerous shield against the opposite traffic.

 

In his head, Amelia continued. “I think that there’s just something we’re missing, and that’s why things haven’t been so great lately.” She gave Kieren a hopeful smile.

 

He had grunted. He’d been tired from his day at work, but that could only be blamed so much. What he had said next had been unforgivable, the recognition of the beginning of the end. “We haven’t been good lately? What does that mean? Do you not love me anymore?”

 

There, he had said it. The forbidden L word, never to be spoken between them after their second year married. Their problem was not to be acknowledged. Amelia’s smile slipped from her face.

 

“No, honey, I love you. I just think I know why we haven’t been as--passionate.”

 

At Kieren’s stark silence, she had forged on alone. “I think we should have a baby. Imagine it, a little boy or girl to bring such joy around here, someone to play with and raise, go through life with. It would be wonderful, don’t you think?”

 

Kieren’s expression hadn’t changed. He had not been thrilled by this proposal. “So what.” His tone was flat and destroyed every last facet of residual happiness on Amelia’s face. She was trying to make it through an unhappy marriage, but Kieren had already resigned himself to dwelling in the unhappiness.

 

“What would we do with a baby? We can’t even keep this marriage afloat--or ‘passionate’. Any child would suffocate in this environment. This could kill a fly. I wake up every day and I’m not even sure I’m still alive, Amelia, because I am numb and tired and stifled with no hope of fresh air for the rest of my life. No adoption agency in their right minds would let us have a child.”

 

Amelia sucked in a breath. “Adoption agency?”

 

“Well, yeah. Wait--you didn’t think we were going to fuck to make this baby did you?” Kieren’s tone was derisive, unsympathetic to the miserable woman unraveling in front of him who was trying to make things better. She, at least, put her best foot forward until the end. Still trying to get him to make love, trying to get him to love her with romantic gestures. After they gave up on sex, Kieren had given up on their marriage altogether.

 

It had been an ending in and of itself, yet somehow self-contained and kept separate from the rest of their marriage. And now Amelia wanted to go back to that time before.

 

Amelia’s eyes had been shining by then, wet with tears already. “I wanted it to be ours. Our little baby,” her voice broke as she pleaded. “Please, Kieren, you would love a little one, maybe a Bill or a…a Rick Walker?”

 

Kieren had jerked and dropped his briefcase on the ground. His voice became cold and hard. “No.”

 

Amelia had pleaded some more, cried some more, but he hadn’t budged and he hadn’t gone to bed with her. Eventually he turned, sharply, a harsh glint in his eye and spat out, “Amelia, I am not subjecting a child to the pure fucking misery of this relationship. No one deserves to grow up with the torment that I know being married to you.”

 

She had been deathly quiet after that. They had stayed married for three more years.

 

Kieren came back to himself behind the wheel, just fast enough to stop himself from sliding into a ditch. He jerked the car back to the center of his lane, taking advantage of his clear eyesight to gun the engine and step on the gas. The highway shot by, empty and deserted at this hour of the night. Occasionally a pair of headlights would come from the other direction.

 

Suddenly, the road was blurry. No pain in his chest--he wasn’t having another memory. Something dripped wet onto his arms, his lap. He blinked rapidly and realized he was crying. The tragedy wasn’t even in their relationship: marriages break up all the time. It was in him, how he handled it. To withdraw further from Amelia, to isolate her in what should have been her home, to make her think it was all her fault they were drifting apart, that was the tragedy. He had made her take the fall for it all, when really it had been no one’s fault.

 

The morning after they had called it quits for good, the baby Amelia’s long forgotten dream of months previous, Kieren had woken up on the floor of a stark, empty apartment. The night before had come flooding back with all the cruel things he had said to Amelia, and this time it was enough to end it permanently.

 

Kieren’s vision fogged up, the memory-flashback self-inflicted this time, and the road disappeared from view. He did his best to keep driving straight, clenching his teeth against the pain of this one, the most recent of them all.

 

He remembered rolling over and vomiting. The contents of his stomach emptied themselves immediately onto the floor and lay there, mocking him. He didn’t know whose floor it was. He didn’t know where he’d gone after he had left the house last night.

 

Except he didn’t live there anymore. It was Amelia’s house. Nearly a decade spent there and he had nowhere to go after he left in an instant.

 

It really hadn’t been, Kieren knew, there was no denying it. He had been leaving Amelia for the better part of their marriage, it had just been dragged out. He had dragged it out.

 

Sitting up, he wanted to throw something, wanted to cry, wanted to call Amelia. His phone was lying on the floor across the room--too far. Kieren couldn’t make it without crying or vomiting again, and he didn’t want her to hear him like that.

 

Guilt washed over him constant every minute, inescapable and punishing. He groaned to the silent room, falling back onto the couch cushions he had slept on.

 

There was a noise in another room and then footsteps followed by a man who came in, grinning cheerfully. He said something to Kieren, and Kieren, barely strong enough to listen, gathered that he had picked this guy up at some bar or another last night. He squeezed his eyes shut to this guy’s chatter and retched again, ruining the guy’s white couch.

 

Sure enough, he wasn’t happy. Kieren got thrown out shortly after he opened his mouth and spouted some irritable stuff at the guy, and didn’t stick around any longer for morning sex.

 

Now Kieren felt angry, stumbling through the streets and trying to make up his mind where to go. He felt uncomfortable covered in his own vomit and scruff was overtaking his face like ivy on a house.

 

Every so often, he would remember something terrible he’d done or said at one point in the nine years and would double over again, dry heaving into a trash can.

 

Wherever he walked, wherever he rode the train to, he couldn’t escape the flashbacks that kept piling up the guilt on top of him so that by the end of the day he felt like he was carrying a bag of stones on his back. He didn’t know where he slept, just that by the next morning he was on a bigger train, this time further away from the city. As the distance between him and Amelia grew, the quieter his thoughts became. By the end of the line, he could almost think clearly again. He could almost stop crying.

 

Then he kept going, and eventually he went so far that most people stopped boarding the trains with him, until finally he was left in Warsaw, the irregular bus kicking up dust as it pulled away. It left him in a new life, with a new sense of home that he didn’t quite have yet. The lingering feeling of nausea had stayed with him the whole trip, but had finally becoming manageable in this latest town. So he stayed and hadn’t left. A job was easy enough to come by--the whole town so rundown that there was always repair work to be had--and so few people lived there they couldn’t even self-sustain except by hiring the new people, even those who dropped in for one season. The tourists, as Kieren called them with irony. He built himself a niche in the desolate wasteland.

 

The guilt was still inescapable some days, racking him with grief and shame so hard he couldn’t get out of bed, just lying there, letting the emotions wrack him one by one. After he got Layla, that part had become better because she would come and cuddle beside him, trying to comfort him, and he would look at her and remember he had done right by her.

 

But Amelia would always haunt him.

 

The truck bumped and swerved and Kieren wrenched the steering wheel back to the left to prevent himself from off-roading.

 

Even if he could see the road right now, his eyes were full of tears, blurring the lines on the road.

 

He didn’t succeed, ultimately. He knew that for certain now. At first he had come here while wandering, but with an underlying sense of purpose. To make himself better; rehabilitate himself for society, figure out who he could be if without Amelia and if he were a better person than he had been with her.

 

Bitter tears fell onto the steering wheel. Kieren’s hands clenched it as if a life preserver. He thought about all he had done there, in Warsaw, in the town four hours behind him. A _there_ and no longer a _here_ , after six long years. What had he really accomplished, after so much time? Had he been keeping himself in quarantine, or was he really just scared to go back into the world? Every time he would think about leaving, seriously toss around the idea for the next spring, or the next, a shiver would go down his spine and the thought would ultimately get buried in more work.

 

But eventually, the world had come to find him. A leak in the dam of Warsaw had allowed Simon to slip through and find him, forever putting cracks in his facade of a plan instantly.

 

And now Simon was gone from him. He had ruined that, too; finally, he had made it unbearable for any person to stay in love with him. The thought was crushing, enough that Kieren nearly let go of the wheel to take him wherever it wanted.

 

What had he accomplished? The lighthouse was fixed, Layla had a good home, he kept the bar in business with his patronage, but that was it. If he went back to Amelia right now, he would make the same mistakes, he knew it. Another six years of his life, wasted to another mistake of his.

 

He tried not to think about it, that terrible phrase with that terrible word near the end of it. Kieren blinked tears out of his eyes and tried to think of Simon. All he had done for him, all down the drain. Attempt after attempt, out of the goodness of his heart, but it hadn’t been good enough to redeem him. He was incorrigible.

 

Kieren inhaled a shaky breath and tried to focus on the road.

 

He couldn’t ignore it; he had failed.

 

The thought slammed into his head, uninvited, an invader in its own home. The stark, undeniable truth of it prickled his mind and forced up tears behind his eyes. A sudden onslaught of them and he couldn’t see the road as if he was in a downpour.

 

The car swerved again and again and Kieren let it, the wheel slipping through his numb fingers, the act of holding the thoughts out of his head taking up every mental capacity he had.

 

The truck jostled over and over again as it drifted past the road’s shoulder and off it entirely, tossing Kieren around until suddenly, finally, making impact. Kieren slammed hard against a tree and was thrown forward, forehead bouncing off the steering wheel. The car ground to a halt. He was numb, too numb to do anything but lean back against the headrest, trying to collect his breath and stop crying.

 

Fingers fumbling, he reached over and unclipped his seatbelt as he opened the car door. He tumbled out and stumbled like a shaky fawn for a couple steps, enough to ascertain that he hadn’t hit another person, just a big, solid tree.

 

He rolled his eyes at it and stumbled away. That car was undrivable now, but he had to keep moving. Where was the nearest train station, bus...

 

Unsteadily, trying to put one foot in front of the other, he managed to make it a good distance away from his car. He had aimed in the direction of the road and tried to follow it but unintentionally veered off course. The sparse forest that edged the side of the road now surrounded him instead of loose gravel lining the highway.

 

He didn’t have the strength to change direction, so he stuck with this.

 

After a little bit, the grassy floor sloped up, forming a steep hill which at the top of stood a giant cliff. It cut away sharply to leave a treacherous edge with an enormous drop down to the beach below. Waves lapped up at the edge of the sand, more beautiful than anything Kieren ever thought would exist around here.

 

Up here, he felt lighter and unburdened, ready to shout his problems to the world. It was as if he felt at once open and closed--talking to everyone yet no one was listening.

 

“WHY DO YOU TAUNT ME?” He screamed to the world, open and free before him. “HAVEN’T I GIVEN ENOUGH TO GET SOME FORGIVENESS? I DEMAND IT.”

 

His words were whipped away from his mouth almost as soon as they left his throat. The wind tore at Kieren’s clothes, as if it would like to shred them from his body.

 

“HELP ME,” he shouted. He wasn’t crying anymore--the wind was too high for tears to fall onto his cheeks before getting swept away. “WHY CAN’T I HAVE FORGIVENESS, WHY CAN’T I BE DONE?”

 

Who he was talking to, he had no idea, he just knew that it didn’t match up with the idea of God most people talked about.

 

“Help me,” he said again and it came out like a whisper.

 

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do,” a voice said behind him.

 

Kieren felt a thrill of excitement run through him and turned in shock to look at Simon, standing behind him on the cliff, the wind whipping up the same sweater he always wore.

 

“Simon,” he said breathlessly, tamping down the elation that rose in his stomach.

 

“Hey,” he said warmly, letting an unexpected smile grow across his face. Kieren felt a corresponding warmth light up deep inside of him.  
  
“Kieren,” Simon said, face growing serious and tone pleading. “It’s not your fault.”

 

Kieren let a sob rip from his chest and turned away so Simon wouldn’t hear. The water pulsed down below, tossing itself ceaselessly against the rocks, trying again and again to wear them down and never giving up. His face felt hot and wet despite the sea air.

 

“Six years of my life, Simon, up here, away from civilization, away from anything I could hurt. But still I managed to fail. I still hurt someone. You. I didn’t change, nothing is new, and I’m still the same person I was when I was twenty, twenty-nine.”

 

The gravel shifted at his feet and he was suddenly, giddily aware of how close the drop was. He could go plummeting down thousands of feet at any time. He was at the whims of the wind and sea. Simon, behind him, gasped quietly. Kieren held still, too close to the precipice for Simon’s comfort, he knew.

 

It wasn’t that he wanted to; it was just that maybe, possibly, if he stepped off he would fly and suddenly feel as high and as mighty as whatever he was shouting to and had been for all this time.

 

“I’M SO TIRED,” he yelled all of a sudden, the words ripping out of his chest and leaving him breathless as the wind carried them away down the cliffs, maybe to another person standing there, looking out too. Maybe that person would actually succeed in being airborne and fly.

 

“KIEREN,” he heard Simon behind him. “No one’s going to save you. No one’s going to open up the heavens and forgive you like a god!”

 

A crunch of gravel and then he had a vice-like grip on Kieren’s arm, pleading. “Kieren, you have to forgive yourself.”

 

Simon’s face looking shot-through with desperation, his brow creased and stress lines bulging.

 

Kieren gave him a small smile. “Don’t worry Simon. I’m not going to go over.” He gently prised Simon’s hand off his arm, holding his fingers loosely between them, wanting to hang on, but not sure if he was allowed.

 

“Does this mean you’ve forgiven me?” Kieren asked, tears still being pulled from his eyes with the wind.

 

Simon’s face grew dark. “No. I just needed to know that you weren’t going to go off and do something stupid.”

 

“What, like go to see Amelia? I thought about it. She’d be thrilled to see me. Really, she would. Probably is dying for the chance to gloat at how great her life is over mine now. And doesn’t she deserve to?”

 

Simon shook his head slowly. “Kieren. Oh, Kier. No one wants revenge on you. No one hates you forever. Amelia, yes, she’s probably moved on with her life, but she doesn’t get up everyday and think about you. Not like you do her.”

 

“Kieren,” he continued, lacing his fingers through with Kieren’s and looking at him with a face full of straight, open honesty as always. “You are the only one still holding yourself back.”

 

Looking into Simon’s face, Kieren wanted to believe him. He knew that Simon wholeheartedly believed it himself. But he just didn’t know the whole story, couldn’t feel the raw emotions that had torn through Kieren six years ago when he made the biggest mistake of his life. It was too much, too much for Simon to know; he couldn’t help him.

 

Giving a small sigh, Kieren slipped his hands out of Simon’s. “Simon, you can’t know,” he told him.

 

Simon’s expression turned shocked and angry. “Can’t know? You told me, Kieren, you sat down for hours and told me the whole story, what do you mean I can’t know? If I don’t know it’s because you NEVER TELL ME! I can’t be you, I can’t get inside your head and know your every thought! You keep everything to yourself! And then you turn around and blame me for not _knowing_?”

 

With that, Simon grabbed the front of Kieren’s shirt and hauled him up with one hand, dragging him around so he wasn’t backed up to the cliff. Kieren was so shocked that he let it happen, let himself part with his natural lectern.

 

To his surprise, Simon gave him a shove, not gently, that sent him reeling back toward the trees. “Kieren, you are the ONLY ONE punishing yourself! You are the ONLY REASON for all of this, for living in Warsaw and staying away from people and making me _fucking miserable_! I BLAME YOU! And I’m the ONLY ONE. Because you’re an adult, because you have fucking AGENCY. You hurt me and I didn’t deserve that. But Kieren,”

 

He paused, sucking in breath, calming himself down. “I’d forgive you. I’d forgive you in a second if you apologized. If you said you were sorry, that you’d changed, if you told me, regularly, for the pure joy of wanting to share yourself with me, your thoughts and feelings every day for the rest of our time together. I want to know you, Kier. But you make it so difficult. I can’t--I can’t fall in love with someone so distant.”

 

Kieren’s breath caught fast in his chest. Six years ago, he had heard the same words in a woman’s voice, from someone so different he wondered if this were all a joke that life was playing on him.

 

And suddenly--it didn’t seem like a joke. It seemed like a second chance. A perfectly diverging path in the woods that offered him two tracks: the same as before or a change. Something new and scary, but, looking at Simon who was still staring at him with disappointment, good. Safe with him.

 

He thought about how his heart had leapt against his will at Simon’s words. How he longed to say them back, how he wanted to get rid of the blockade inside him that was stopping his tongue every single time. It would be like tearing down his own wall, finally. Maybe he would even be lucky enough to uncover the cave retreating behind it and to save what he couldn’t save before. Maybe he could complete the work he’d thought he’d abandoned for good.

 

“So I should forgive myself? If I forgive myself and apologize to you then everything’s great, and there are no more problems?” Kieren was fighting back more tears, precariously perched on the verge of a breakdown.

 

Simon looked at him with sad eyes. “Oh Kieren, I think we both know the problem isn’t really forgiveness.”

 

Kieren looked at him in confusion. That was the whole reason he had come here, seeking forgiveness from either himself or Amelia. Or even the Amelia that he imagined in his head.

 

Simon shook his head. “Kieren, the real problem is the same as it was with Amelia--you don’t open up. You lock things away to the point where it’s boiling up inside you and you have to come to a cliff’s edge to shout it out rather than tell someone. Me.”

 

Kieren looked away, tears spilling down his face. He dragged his hand over his cheeks, trying to sort out his thoughts. Deeply, intrinsically, he knew Simon was right. But what he was asking Kieren to do was scary. He didn’t know if he could manage it after years and years of his life spent keeping his mouth shut and doing nothing. But it hadn’t turned out well.

 

Kieren turned to the cliff again, facing the sea spray and trying to calm his racing thoughts. Trying, with the last scraps of his doubt, to justify to himself this path he’s already on. Change was abrupt, difficult, risky. If only things were as they were in February, when he had Simon in his bed and everything was the same as it had been for the years before, but better. That, to Kieren, had been the peak of happiness; that was the best he could ever do. That’s what he had told himself at the time. He had reconciled himself to the idea of only a medium amount of happiness in Warsaw, a town that doled out increments of joy with a miserly grasp.

 

That had been his life. But now he faced a change.

 

He realized, abruptly, that when he had set out from Warsaw, before he had crashed the car, that he had always meant to return. It was as if this trip to the cliffs had been a day trip, a jaunt out for the day for some beach time. Not meant to change anything, not meant for anyone to bear witness to but himself.

 

But of course, Simon had come and changed everything

 

Looking away at the water, Kieren said in a quiet voice, so shy that he thought Simon might not even have heard, “I don’t...know how to change up here. I’ve been the same person the whole time.”

 

Crossing to the edge of the cliff, Kieren sat down and let his legs dangle over the side of the huge drop, relaxing into the jump in adrenaline that came with looking over. He stayed there looking over, in stasis, watching the waves lap up against the rocks.

 

Simon stood behind him. “Kier, you wouldn’t have to be alone. I would help you.”

 

Before he could stop himself, Kieren was objecting. “No, I can do it alone, I—”

 

“The hell you can! If you could, you would have done years ago! Or did you just not realize that that was your true goal by being up here, if at all?”

 

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Kieren twisted around, voice accusing.

 

“Oh, Kieren, just that your whole time up here, what has it really been for? Has it been about forgiveness or Amelia or whatever, or has it really been about you? I think you just didn’t--don’t--know how to process this thing that happened to you and now it’s been snowballing for six years. You can’t even fall in love again without letting go of it!”

 

Kieren glared at Simon, holding his gaze for a long moment. Simon’s accusations rang between them, neither able to deny it.

 

Kieren looked away. “You’re right, of course you’re right, perfect fucking Simon!” He shouted the words out to the open air that hung between him and the top of the water. “You know what I don’t need? A fucking babysitter!”

 

“I just care about you, Kieren! Someone’s gotta do it!” It was the same fight, over and over again, and Kieren could see all the way to the end. Simon would leave him alone and miserable on this cliffside and they would both go their separate ways in life and he would have lost another lover forever. Another mark in the book.

 

“Kieren,” he said softly and suddenly, Kieren knew he saw the end, too. It was like a long track stretching out before them, one they were both trying to ignore. Maybe if they wished it away hard enough, it would disappear.

 

Suddenly Kieren couldn’t help it and tears were welling up in his eyes and dripping hot onto his legs. His body wracked with sobs and he did his best to not let Simon see, turning his head. But it didn’t do much good.  
  
Walking over and crouching behind him, Simon put a hand on Kieren’s shoulder, gentle and firm. “Kieren,” he said again quietly in that achingly comfortable tone. It almost hurt Kieren’s ears to hear the amount of concentrated love in that one word, and, unable to bear it, he cried harder.

 

Simon increased the pressure of his hand, but Kieren shrugged him off. He immediately regretted it when Simon gave up a sigh and leaned back, moving out of Kieren’s space. Slowly, hesitantly, Kieren turned around, lifted his head, and let Simon see him, tears and all.

 

He let him see the way the wind had ripped at his shirt, until it was almost torn from his body, the neckline lopsided and showing more of one shoulder than the other. Instead of the neat, composed face he normally sported, it was red and blotchy, oozing more tears even as he looked at Simon’s face with hope. His hands, when he put them gently on Simon’s legs, were dirty, having been shoved into the earth in anger as he tried to ground himself.

 

He let himself cry and hold onto Simon’s legs, desperately hoping with every fiber in his body for acceptance. If Simon got up and left him here to cry, too ugly, too pathetic to be loved, Kieren would be wrecked.

 

But Simon, clearly surprised, just went, “Oh,” which Kieren took as a sign that he could lean forward into him. Still crying, he let himself be held by Simon bigger arms which encircled him. As his face lay against Simon’s ratty old sweater and he was embraced by the man he loved, he thought to himself, barely daring enough to say it: maybe change can be good. Maybe it’s time for some growth.

 

Simon kept glancing down at him, clearly surprised at the fact that Kieren was crying, openly and into his chest. Kieren couldn’t remember a time when he felt more vulnerable and terrified, but he forced himself to stay there, held fast and warm by Simon as the wind scattered around them and died.

 

They stayed like that, embracing on the cliff’s edge until they were both shivering and clutching at each other for warmth. Only then did Kieren speak, offering some sort of explanation, really a kind of plea.

 

“I love you too much to let you get away,” he said, looking up into Simon’s face. He wasn’t shying away anymore.

 

Simon gave him a solemn smile. “I love you too much to let you fuck us up.” Kieren felt a laugh bubble up in him. He smiled and rested his chest against Simon’s again, feeling grounded in the moment, despite the wind’s previous attempts to tear him away, off the path and far away from Warsaw. But not Warsaw, so much anymore, as Simon. He had outgrown Warsaw.

 

***

 

“Do we go back?” He whispered to Simon after a while longer. There was nothing he wanted more than to put that godforsaken town in his rearview and go somewhere new, somewhere people lived and thrived and even picked as a tourist destination. He couldn’t wait to be surrounded by so many people that he was rendered anonymous by it. If he could become invisible by virtue of being in a crowd, just another guy living his life with a job, friends, a boyfriend, he would welcome it. It sounded so refreshing. He couldn’t wait to stop breathing in Warsaw’s polluted air and trade it for a city wind, the kind of nip that comes rushing in between skyscrapers or a meandering breeze that shifts curtains in the suburbs.

 

Suddenly, he was itching to get out.

 

Getting to his feet, he pulled Simon with him, guiding him back through the little copse of trees to Kieren’s wrecked car, which he climbed into, crossed his fingers, and tried to start. The engine turned over a couple of times, but he finally managed to punch it to life.

 

He was just about to pull away from the side of the road, leaving behind the tree he had crashed into with its new scrapes and bruises, when Simon reached over and laid a staying hand on his wrist.

 

“Kieren,” he reminded him. “We have to go back.”

 

Kieren’s eyes widened, immediately objecting. “I can’t stay there, Simon, I can’t live there anymore. I have to be anywhere else.” For a moment, he wondered if this was going to be the end so soon, that Simon was going to say he wouldn’t follow Kieren to the city.

 

“No, Kieren, but just for a moment.”

 

Kieren immediately caught his meaning. He had forgotten about Layla. She would come with Kieren wherever he went in the future, of course. She was his companion and although they had met in Warsaw, because of this place, even, Kieren knew they were with each other for life.

 

After picking her up, they hit the road, Simon driving fast on the highway out of town, the only car peppering the old, worn asphalt with headlights.

 

Clouds hung over them up above, typical Warsaw weather to bid them goodbye. They stretched endlessly in front of Kieren, so far that he thought when he finally saw the sun he’d be halfway to China. The highway ran parallel to the sea on one side and through the trees and Kieren caught glimpses of it as it called to him to come back. He just watched it stonily though, giving it a solemn goodbye.

 

He hoped he would never return here in his whole life.

 

They ended up in London. It was the obvious choice and after hours in the car, they finally saw the skyline lit up in the distance. Kieren looked over at Simon as eyes spilled over with joy with tears that leaked from the corners of his eyes and took his hand, clutching it close. Layla barked happily in the backseat.

 

It wasn’t a permanent home, by any means, nor did they settle down there in their happily-ever-after. Every couple of months, sometimes a year or two if they were lucky or confident in the secrecy of their place, they moved. The mob was still after Simon, disgruntled and unhappy that he had still gotten away. They would continue looking for a couple decades, persistent to a fault.

 

Kieren didn’t mind all the moving--in fact, he loved it. After six years of never leaving the same 300 square kilometer town, he was always happy for a change.

 

As the years wore on, Kieren and Simon constantly shifted from place to place, but remained certain of each other. Neither was leaving now, no matter the obstacle. Simon made sure Kieren talked to him, pulling him out of his quiet moods when they happened, and Kieren, in turn, loved him with his whole heart, unselfishly.

 

They were both finally happy with each other. Over the years, they were sure that the town of Warsaw still existed, but they never returned to it and never spoke of wanting to. There was nothing that they couldn’t provide for each other together now--that was their love. Completely true love, at last.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone who encouraged me in this.


End file.
